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LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 








LORD, TEACH US 
TO PRAY 

SERMONS ON PRAYER 


ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D., LL.D. 

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NEW 



YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


{Printed in Great Britain ] 







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Prepared for the Press by /. M. E. Ross, 
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PREFACE 


It is not the purpose of this Preface to anticipate 
the biography of Dr. Whyte, now being pre¬ 
pared by Dr. G. Freeland Barbour, or to provide 
a considered estimate of the great preacher’s work 
as a whole. But it may be well briefly to explain 
the appearance of the present volume, and to take 
it, so far as it goes, as a mirror of the man. The 
desire has been e :pressed in various quarters that 
this sequence of ^rmons on prayer should appear 
by itself. Possibly it may be followed at a later 
date by a representative volume of discourses, 
taken from different points in Dr. Whyte’s long 
mini t is a curious fact that he who was by 

general consent the greatest Scottish preacher of 
his day published during his lifetime no volume 
of Sunday morning sermons, though his successive 
series of character studies, given as evening lectures, 
were numerous and widely known. 

At the close of the winter season, 1894-95, Dr. 
Whyte had brought to a conclusion a lengthy series 
of pulpit studies in the teaching of our Lord. It 
was evident that our Lord’s teaching about prayer 
had greatly fascinated him : more than one sermon 


VI 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


upon that had been included. And in the winter 
of 1895-96, he began a series of discourses in which 
St. Luke xi. 1, “ Lord, teach us to pray,” was 
combined with some other text, in order to exhibit 
various aspects of the life of prayer. The most of 
these discourses were preached in 1895-96, though 
a few came in 1897 ; and at intervals till 1906 some 
of them were re-delivered, or the sequence was 
added to. On the whole, in Dr. Whyte’s later 
ministry, no theme was so familiar to his con¬ 
gregation or so beloved by himself as “ Luke eleven 
and one.” To include the whole series here would 
have made a volume far too bulky : in a sequence 
stretching over so long a time and dealing with 
themes so closely allied, there is a considerable 
amount of repetition : it was necessary to select. 
For instance, Paul’s Prayers and Thanksgivings were 
dealt with at length, and are here represented only 
by two examples. Further, it has not been possible 
to give the sermons in chronological order ; Dr. 
Whyte dealt with the aspect of the matter upper¬ 
most in his mind for the week, and followed no 
plan which is now discernible : for the grouping, 
therefore, as for the selection, the present editors 
are responsible. They hope that the volume so 
selected and arranged may be a sufficient indication 
of the style and spirit of the whole sequence. 1 The 

1 The sermons on Jacob and the Man who knocked at mid¬ 
night are parallel to the extent of a few sentences, and that on 


PREFACE 


Vll 


Scottish pulpit owes much to “ Courses ” of sermons, 
in which some great theme could be deliberately 
treated, some vast tract of doctrine or experience 
adequately surveyed. This method of preaching 
may be out of fashion with the restless mind of 
to-day, but in days when it was patiently heard 
it had an immensely educative effect : it was a 
means at once of enlarging and deepening. And 
Dr. Whyte’s people were often full of amazement 
at the endless force, freshness and fervour which 
he poured into this series, bringing out of “ Luke 
eleven and one,” as out of a treasury, things new 
and old. 

Nobody else could have preached these sermons, 
—after much reading and re-reading of them that 
remains the most vivid impression : there can be 
few more strongly personal documents in the whole 
literature of the pulpit. Of course, his favourites 
appear—Dante and Pascal, Butler and Andrewes, 
Bunyan and Edwards: they contribute their 
gift of illustration or enforcement, and fade away. 
But these pages are Alexander Whyte : the glow 
and radiance of them came out of that flaming 
heart. Those who knew and loved him will wel¬ 
come the autobiographic touches. In one of the 

Elijah to the extent of a paragraph or two, with studies previously 
published in the Bible Characters. But they are so character¬ 
istic of the preacher, and so vital to the series that it has been 
deemed wise to give them, even though they are slightly re¬ 
miniscent of matter which has before appeared. 


Vlll 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


sermons he recommends his hearers so to read the 
New Testament that it shall be autobiographic 
of themselves : if ever a man read his Bible so, 
it was he. The 51st Psalm and many another 
classical passage of devotion took on a new colour 
and savour because, with the simplest and in- 
tensest sincerity, he found his own autobiography 
in them. Who that heard it spoken could ever 
forget the description, given on one of the following 
pages, of the wintry walk of one who thought him¬ 
self forsaken of God, until the snows of Schiehallion 
made him cry, “ Wash me, and I shall be whiter 
than snow,” and brought back God’s peace to his 
heart ? But in a more general sense this whole 
volume is autobiographic. “ Deliver your own 
message ” was his counsel to his colleague, John 
Kelman. He did so himself : it is here. One or 
two ingredients in it are specially noteworthy. 

1. One is his wonderful gift of Imagination. It 
is characteristic of him that, in his treatment of his 
chosen theme, he should give one whole discourse 
to the use of the imagination in prayer. But there 
is scarcely a sermon which does not at some point 
illustrate the theme of that discourse. Here was a 
soul “ full of eyes.” He had the gift of calling up 
before himself that of which he spoke ; and, speak¬ 
ing with his eye on the object, as he loved to put it, 
he made his hearers see it too with a vividness which 
often startled them and occasionally amused them. 


PREFACE 


IX 


The Scripture scene was extended by some lifelike 
touch which increased the sense of reality without 
exceeding the bounds of probability. A case in 
point is the man who knocked at midnight. “ He 
comes back; he knocks again : ‘ Friend ! ’ he cries, 
till the dogs bark at him” And sometimes the im¬ 
agination clothes itself in a certain grim grotesquerie 
which arrests the slumbering attention and is en¬ 
tirely unforgettable, as in the description of the 
irreverent family at prayers,—their creaking chairs, 
their yawns and coughs and sneezes, their babel 
of talk unloosed before the Amen is well uttered. 
These pages contain many instances of the imagina¬ 
tion which soars, as he bids her do, on shining wing, 
up past sun, moon and stars, but also of a more 
pedestrian imagination, with shrewd eyes and a 
grave smile, busy about the criticism of life and 
the healthy castigation of human nature. 

2 . Along with this goes a strongly dramatic 
instinct. This provides some words and phrases 
in the following pages, which might not stand the 
test of a cold or pedantic criticism. A strict editor¬ 
ship might have cut them out : Dr. Whyte himself 
might have done so, had he revised these pages for 
the press. But they have been allowed to stand 
because they now enshrine a memory : even after 
twenty-five years or more, they will bring back 
to some hearers the moments when the preacher’s 
eyes were lifted off his manuscript, when his hand 


X 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


was suddenly flung out as though he tracked the 
movements of an invisible presence, when his voice 
expanded into a great cry that rang into every 
corner of the church. In this mood the apostrophe 
was instinctive: *‘0 Paul, up in heaven, be 

merciful in thy rapture ! Hast thou forgotten that 
thou also was once a wretched man ? ” Equally 
instinctive to it is the tendency to visualise, behind 
an incident or an instance, its scenery and back¬ 
ground : “ the man of all prayer is still on his 
knees. . . . See ! the day breaks over his place of 
prayer ! See ! the Kingdom of God begins to come 
in on the earth.” Occasionally—very ocasionally 
but all the more effectively because so seldom—the 
dramatic instinct found fuller scope in a lengthy 
quotation from Shakespeare or even from Ibsen. 
The intellectual and spiritual effect was almost 
overwhelming the morning he preached on our 
Lord’s prayer in Gethsemane. Dwelling for a 
moment on the seamless robe, with “ the blood of 
the garden, and of the pillar ” upon it, he suddenly 
broke off into the passage from Julius Cczsar : 

You all do know this mantle : I remember 

The first time Caesar ever put it on. 

It was a daring experiment—did ever any other 
preacher link these two passages together ?—but 
in Dr. Whyte’s hands extraordinarily moving. The 
sermon closed with a great shout, “ Now let it 


PREFACE 


xi 


work ! ” and his hearers, as they came to the 
Communion Table that morning, must have been 
of one heart and mind in the prayer that in them 
the Cross of Christ should not be “ made of none 
effect.” 

3. It was Dr. Whyte’s own wish that he should be 
known as a specialist in the study of sin : he was 
willing to leave other distinctions to other men. 
No reader of these pages will be surprised to dis¬ 
cover that, in the place of prayer which this preacher 
builds, the Miserere and the De Profundis are among 
the most haunting strains. The question has often 
been asked—Did Dr. Whyte paint the world and 
human nature too black ? Even if he did, two 
things perhaps may be said. The first is that there 
are so few specialists now in this line of teaching, 
that we can afford occasionally to listen to one who 
made it his deliberate business. And the second 
is that the clouds which this prophet saw lying 
over the fives of other men were no blacker than 
those which he honestly believed to haunt his own 
soul. That sense of sin goes with him all the way 
and enters into every message. If he overhears 
Habakkuk praying about the Chaldeans, the 
Chaldeans turn immediately into a parable of the 
power which enslaves our sinful fives. Assyria, 
Babylonia, anything cruel, tyrannous, aggressive, 
is but a finger-post pointing to that inward and 
ultimate bondage out of which all other tyrannies 


Xll 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and wrongs take their rise. That is why a series of 
this kind, like Dr. Whyte’s whole ministry, is so 
deepening. And that is also why these pages are 
haunted by a sense of the difficulty of the spiritual 
life, and especially of the life of prayer : we have 
such arrears to make up, such fetters to break ; 
we are so much encased in the horrible pit and the 
miry clay. The preacher is frank enough about 
himself: “ daily self-denial is uphill work with me ” ; 
and when in Teresa, or in Boston, or in the Puritans, 
he finds confession of dryness and deadness of soul, 
he knows that he is passing through the same ex¬ 
perience as some of the noblest saints of God. If 
the souls of the saints have sometimes their soaring 
path and their shining wings, they at other times 
are more as Thomas Vaughan describes them, like 
moles that “ lurk in blind entrenchments ”— 

Heaving the earth to take in air. 

So these sermons become a tremendous rallying call 
to our moral energies, that we may overcome our 
handicap, and shake off our load of dust, and do 
our best with our exhilarating opportunity. Here 
the sermon on “ The Costliness of Prayer ” is typical: 
there is small chance of success in the spiritual life 
unless we are willing to take time and thought and 
trouble,—unless we are willing to sacrifice and crucify 
our listless, slothful, self-indulgent habits. This is a 
Stoicism, a small injection of which might put iron 


PREFACE 


• • • 
xni 

into the blood of some types of Christianity ; Seneca 
and Teresa, as they are brought into alliance here, 
make very good company. 

4. For the total and final effect of such preaching 
is not depressing : it is full of stimulus and en¬ 
couragement mainly because the vision of sin and 
the vision of difficulty are never far removed from 
the vision of Grace. Dr. Whyte’s preaching, stern 
as the precipitous sides of a great mountain, was 
also like a great mountain in this, that it had many 
clefts and hollows, with sweet springs and healing 
plants. One of his most devoted elders wrote of him : 
“ No preacher has so often or so completely dashed 
me to the ground as has Dr. Whyte ; but no man 
has more immediately or more tenderly picked me 
up and set me on my feet again.” Perhaps there 
was no phrase more characteristic of him, either in 
preaching or in prayer, than the prophet’s cry, “ Who 
is a God like unto Thee ? ” And when at his bidding, 
—with an imagination which is but faith under 
another name,—we ourselves become the leper at 
Christ’s feet, or the prodigal returning home, or 
Peter in the porch, or Lazarus in his grave, and find 
in Christ the answer to all our personal need,—we 
begin to feel how real the Grace of God, the God of 
Grace, was to the preacher, and how real He may be 
to us also. This volume is full of the burdens of the 
saints, the struggles of their souls, and the stains upon 
their raiment. But it is no accident that it ends 



XIV 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


with the song of the final gladness : “ Every one of 
them at last appeareth before God in Zron.” 

When all is said, there is something here that 
defies analysis,—something titanic, something 
colossal, which makes ordinary preaching seem to 
he a long way below such heights as gave the vision 
in these words, such forces as shaped their appeal. 
We are driven back on the mystery of a great soul, 
dealt with in God’s secret ways and given more 
than the ordinary measure of endowment and 
grace. His hearers have often wondered at his 
sustained intensity; as Dr. Joseph Parker once 
wrote of him : “ many would have announced the 
chaining of Satan for a thousand years with less 
expenditure of vital force ” than Dr. Whyte gave 
to the mere announcing of a hymn. That intensity 
was itself the expression of a burning sincerity : 
like his own Bunyan, he spoke what he “ smartingly 
did feel.” And, though his own hand would very 
quickly have been raised to check any such testimony 
while he was alive, it may be said, now that he is 
gone, that he lived intensely what he so intensely 
spoke. In that majestic ministry, stretching over 
so long a time, many would have said that the 
personal example was even a greater thing than the 
burning words,—and not least the personal example 
in the matter of which this book treats,—the fife 
of prayer, ordered, methodical, deliberate, unwearied 


PREFACE 


xv 


in adoration, confession, intercession and thanks¬ 
giving. He at least was not in the condemnation, 
which he describes, of the ministers who attempt 
flights of prayer in public of which they know 
nothing in private. He had his reward in the 
fruitfulness of his pulpit work and in the glow he 
kindled in multitudes of other souls. He has it 
still more abundantly now in that glorified fife of 
which even his soaring imagination could catch only 
an occasional rapturous glimpse. So we number 
him among those who through a long pilgrimage 
patiently pursued the Endless Quest, and who now 
have reached, beyond the splendours of the sunset, 
the one satisfying Goal. 






CONTENTS 


PART I 

INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL 

I. The Magnificence of Prayer 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“A royal priesthood.”— i Pet. ii. 9. \ 

II. The Geometry of Prayer 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“ The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity."— 
Isa. lvii. 15. 

III. The Heart of Man and the Heart of God . 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your 
heart before Him : God is a refuge for us.”—Ps. lxii. 8. 


PART II 

SOME BIBLE TYPES OF PRAYER 

IV. Jacob—Wrestling . 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“Jacob called the name of the place Peniel.”—G en. 
xxxii, 30. 

V. Moses—Making Haste 

“ Lord, teach us to pray."— Luke xi. 1. 

“And Moses made haste.”— Ex. xxxiv. 8. 
b xvii 




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28 


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xviii LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

PAGE 

VI. Elijah—Passionate in Prayer . . .66 

“Lord, teach us to pray."—L uke xi. i. 

“ Elias . . . prayed in his prayer."— Jas. v. 17 (Marg.). 

VII. Job—Groping . . . . .78 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“Oh that I knew where I might find Him! that I 
might come even to His seat!”— Job xxiii. 3. 

VIII. The Psalmist—Setting the Lord always 

BEFORE HIM . . . . 90 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“ I have set the Lord always before me."—Ps. xvi. 8. 


IX. Habakkuk—On his Watch-tower . 103 

“ Lord, teach us to pray."—L uke xi. 1. 

“I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the 
tower.”—H ab. ii. 1. 


X. Our Lord—Sanctifying Himself . .116 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. 1. 

“ And for their sakes I sanctify Myself."—J ohn xvii. 19. 


XI. Our Lord—In the Garden 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called 
Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye 
here, while I go and pray yonder.”—Matt. xxvi. 36. 


XII. One of Paul’s Prayers . 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“ For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father . . .” 
—Eph. iii. 14-19. 


CONTENTS 


xix 


PAGE 

XIII. One of Paul’s Thanksgivings . .157 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“Giving thanks unto the Father . . —Col, i. 

12, 13. 

XIV. The Man who knocked at Midnight . 169 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. i. 

“Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go 
unto him at midnight . . .”—Luke xi. 5-8. 


PART III 

SOME ASPECTS OF THE WAY OF PRAYER 
XV. Prayer to the Most High . . .183 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“They return, but not to the Most High,”—Hos. 
vii. 16. 

XVI. The Costliness of Prayer . . .194 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

“And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye 
shall search for Me with all your heart."— 

Jer. xxix. 13. 

XVII. Reverence in Prayer . . . .205 

“ Lord, teach us to pray."— Luke xi. 1. 

“ Offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased 
with thee, or accept thy person ? saith the Lord 
of hosts.”—M al. i. 8. 

XVIII. The Pleading Note in Prayer . .215 

“Lord, teach us to pray."— Luke xi. 1. 

“ Let us plead together.”—I sa. xliii. 26. 




XX 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


XIX. Concentration in Prayer 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“iWhen thou hast shut thy door."—M att. vi. 6. 

XX. Imagination in Prayer 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“Full of eyes.”—R ev. iv. 8. 

XXI. The Forgiving Spirit in Prayer 
“L ord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“When ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought 
against any."—M ark xi. 25. 


XXII. The Secret Burden . 

“Lord, teach us to pray."— Luke xi. 1. 

“Apart . . .”— Zech. xii. 12. 

XXIII. The Endless Quest . . . . 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. 1. 

‘ He that cometh to God must believe that He is, 
and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently 
seek Him" (lit. that seek Him out).—H eb. xi. 6. 


PAGE 

228 


241 


256 


267 


280 


PART I 


INTRODUCTORY AND 


GENERAL 






I 


THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. i. 

“ A royal priesthood.”—i Pet. ii. 9. 

“ I AM an apostle,” said Paul, “ I magnify mine 

office.” And we also have an office. Our office is 

not the apostolic office, but Paul would be the first 

to say to us that our office is quite as magnificent 

as ever his office was. Let us, then, magnify our 

office. Let us magnify its magnificent opportunities ; 

its momentous duties ; and its incalculable and 

everlasting rewards. For our office is the " royal 

priesthood.” And we do not nearly enough magnify 

and exalt our royal priesthood. To be “ kings and 

priests unto God ”—what a magnificent office is 

that! But then, we who hold that office are men of 

such small and such mean minds, our souls so decline 

and so cleave to this earth, that we never so much 

as attempt to rise to the height and the splendour 

of our magnificent office. If our minds were only 

enlarged and exalted at all up to our office, we would 

be found of God far oftener than we are, with our 

sceptre in our hand, and with our mitre upon our 

head. If we magnified our office, as Paul magnified 

3 




4 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


his office, we would achieve as magnificent results 
in our office as ever he achieved in his. The truth 
is,—Paul’s magnificent results were achieved more 
in our office than in his own. It was because Paul 
added on the royal priesthood to the Gentile apostle- 
ship that he achieved such magnificent results in 
that apostleship. And, if we would but magnify 
our royal priesthood as Paul did—it hath not entered 
into our hearts so much as to conceive what God 
hath prepared for those who properly perform their 
office, as Kings and Priests unto God. 

Prayer is the magnificent office it is, because it is 
an office of such a magnificent kind. Magnificence 
is of many kinds, and magnificent things are more 
or less magnificent according to their kind. This 
great globe on which it strikes its roots and grows 
is magnificent in size when compared with that 
grain of mustard seed : but just because that grain 
of mustard seed is a seed and grows, that smallest 
of seeds is far greater than the great globe itself. A 
bird on its summer branch is far greater than the 
great sun in whose warmth he builds and sings, 
because that bird has life and love and song, which 
the sun, with all his immensity of size, and with all 
his fight and heat, has not. A cup of cold water 
only, given to one of these little ones in the name 
of a disciple, is a far greater offering before God 
than thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers 
of oil; because there is charity in that cup of cold 


THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER 5 


water. And an ejaculation, a sigh, a sob, a tear, a 
smile, a psalm, is far greater to God than all the 
oblations, and incense, and new moons, and Sab¬ 
baths, and calling of assemblies, and solemn meet¬ 
ings of Jerusalem, because repentance and faith and 
love and trust are in that sob and in that psalm. 
And the magnificence of all true prayer—its nobility, 
its royalty, its absolute divinity—all stand in this, 
that it is the greatest kind of act and office that man, 
or angel, can ever enter on and perform. Earth is 
at its very best, and heaven is at its very highest, 
when men and angels magnify their office of prayer 
and of praise before the throne of God. 

i. The magnificence of God is the source and the 
measure of the magnificence of prayer. “ Think 
magnificently of God,” said Paternus to his son. 
Now that counsel is the sum and substance of this 
whole matter. For the heaven and the eafth ; the 
sun and the moon and the stars ; the whole opening 
universe of our day ; the Scriptures of truth, with 
all that they contain ; the Church of Christ, with all 
her services and all her saints—all are set before us 
to teach us and to compel us indeed to “ think 
magnificently of God.” And they have all fulfilled 
the office of their creation when they have all com¬ 
bined to make us think magnificently of their Maker. 
Consider the heavens, the work of His fingers, the 
moon and the stars, which He hath ordained : 
consider the intellectual heavens also, angels and 


6 LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

archangels, cherubim and seraphim : consider man¬ 
kind also, made in the image of God : consider Jesus 
Christ, the express image of His person : consider 
a past eternity and a coming eternity, and the 
revelation thereof that is made to us in the Word 
of God, and in the hearts of His people—and I defy 
you to think otherwise than magnificently of God. 
And, then, after all that, I equally defy you to 
forget, or neglect, or restrain prayer. Once you 
begin to think aright of Him Who is the Hearer of 
prayer; and Who waits, in all His magnificence, 
to be gracious to you—I absolutely defy you to 
live any longer the life you now live. “ First of all, 
my child/’ said Paternus to his son, “ think magni¬ 
ficently of God. Magnify His providence : adore 
His power : frequent His service ; and pray to 
Him frequently and instantly. Bear Him always 
in your mind : teach your thoughts to reverence 
Him in every place, for there is no place where He 
is not. Therefore, my child, fear and worship, and 
love God ; first, and last, think magnificently of 
God.” 

2 . " Why has God established prayer ? ” asks 
Pascal. And Pascal’s first answer to his own great 
question is this. God has established prayer in 
the moral world in order “ to communicate to His 
creatures the dignity of causality.” That is to say, 
to give us a touch and a taste of what it is to be a 
Creator. But then, “ there are some things ulti- 


THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER 7 


mate and incausable," says Bacon, that inter¬ 
preter of nature. And whatever things are indeed 
ultimate to us, and incausable by us, them God 
“ hath put in His own power." But there are many 
other things, and things that far more concern us, 
that He communicates to us to have a hand of 
cause and creation in. Not immediately, and at 
our own rash and hot hand, and at our precipitate 
and importunate will, but always under His Holy 
Hand, and under the tranquillity of His Holy Will. 
We hold our office and dignity of causality and 
creation under the Son, just as He holds His 
again under the Father. But instead of that lessen¬ 
ing our dignity, to us, it rather ennobles and endears 
our dignity. All believers are agreed that they 
would rather hold their righteousness of Christ 
than of themselves ; and so would all praying men : 
they would rather that all things had their spring 
and rise and rule in the wisdom and the love and 
the power of God, than in their own wisdom and 
love and power, even if they had the wisdom and 
the love and the power for such an office. But then, 
again, just as all believing men put on Jesus Christ 
to justification of fife, so do they all put on, under 
Him, their royal robe and their priestly diadem 
and breastplate. And that, not as so many beauti¬ 
ful ornaments, beautiful as they are, but as instru¬ 
ments and engines of divine power. “ Thus saith 
the Lord, the Holy One of Israel,"—as He clothes 


8 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


His priests with salvation,—“ Ask Me of things to 
come concerning My sons, and concerning the 
work of My hands command ye Me.” What a 
thing for God to say to man ! What a magnificent 
office ! What a more than royal dignity ! What 
a gracious command, and what a sure encourage¬ 
ment is that to pray ! For ourselves, first, as His 
sons,—if His prodigal and dishonourable sons,—and 
then for our fellows, even if they are as prodigal 
and as undeserving as we are. Ask of Me ! Even 
when a father is wounded and offended by his son, 
even then, you feel sure that you have his heart¬ 
strings in your hand when you go to ask him for 
things that concern his son ; and that even though 
he is a bad son : even when he sends you away in 
anger, his fatherly bowels move over you as you 
depart : and he looks out at his door to see if you 
are coming back to ask him again concerning his 
son. And when you take boldness and venture 
back, he falls on your neck and says, Command 
me all that is in your heart concerning my son. 
Now, that is the “ dignity of causality,” that in 
which you are the cause of a father taking home 
again his son : and the cause of a son saying, I 
will arise and go to my father. That is your “ mag¬ 
nificent office.” That is your “ royal priesthood.” 

3. And, then, there is this magnificent and right 
noble thing in prayer. Oh, what a noble God 
we have !—says Pascal,—that God shares His 


THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER 9 


creatorship with us ! And I will, to the praise and 
the glory of God this day, add this, that He makes us 
the architects of our own estates, and the fashioners 
of our own fortunes. It is good enough to have an 
estate left us in this life, if we forget we have it : 
it is good enough that we inherit a fortune in this 
world’s goods, if it is not our lasting loss. Only 
there is nothing great, nothing noble, nothing 
magnanimous or magnificent in that. But to have 
begun life with nothing, and to have climbed up by 
pure virtue, by labour, and by self-denial, and by 
perseverance, to the very top,—this world has no 
better praise to give her best sons than that. But 
there is another, and a better world, of which this 
world at its best is but the scaffolding, the pre¬ 
paration, and the porch : and to be the architect 
of our own fortune in that world will be to our ever¬ 
lasting honour. Now, there is this magnificence 
about the world of prayer, that in it we work out, 
not our own bare and naked and “ scarce ” salva¬ 
tion only, but our everlasting inheritance, in¬ 
corruptible and undefilable, with all its unsearch¬ 
able riches. Heaven and earth, time and eternity, 
creation and providence, grace and glory, are all 
laid up in Christ; and then Christ and all His 
unsearchable riches are laid open to prayer ; and 
then it is said to every one of us—Choose you all 
what you will have, and command Me for it ! All 
God’s grace, and all His truth, has been coined— 


10 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


as Goodwin has it—out of purposes into promises ; 
and then all those promises are made “Yea and 
amen ” in Christ; and then out of Christ, they are 
published abroad to all men in the word of the 
Gospel; and, then, all men who read and hear the 
Gospel are put upon their mettle. For what a 
man loves, that that man is. What a man chooses 
out of a hundred offers, you are sure by that who 
and what that man is. And accordingly, put the 
New Testament in any man’s hand, and set the 
Throne of Grace wide open before any man, and you 
need no omniscience to tell you that man’s true 
value. If he lets his Bible lie unopened and un¬ 
read : if he lets God’s Throne of Grace stand till 
death, idle and unwanted : if the depth and the 
height, the nobleness and the magnificence, the 
goodness and the beauty of divine things have no 
command over him, and no attraction to him— 
then, you do not wish me to put words upon the 
meanness of that man’s mind. Look yourselves 
at what he has chosen : look and weep at what he 
has neglected, and has for ever lost ! But there are 
other men : there are men of a far nobler blood than 
that man is : there are great men, royal men : there 
are some men made of noble stuff, and cast into 
a noble mould. And you will never satisfy or 
quiet those men with all you can promise them or 
pour out upon them in this life. They are men of a 
magnificent heart, and only in prayer have their 


THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER 11 


hearts ever got full scope and a proper atmosphere. 
They would die if they did not pray. They magnify 
their office. You cannot please them better than 
to invite and ask them to go to their God in your 
behalf. They would go of their own motion and 
accord for you, even if you never asked them. 
They have prayed for you before you asked them, 
more than you know. They are like Jesus Christ 
in this ; and He will acknowledge them in this. 
While you were yet their enemies, they prayed for 
you, and as good as died for you. And when you 
turn to be their enemies again, they will have their 
revenge on you at the mercy seat. When you feel, 
somehow, as if coals of fire were—from somewhere 
—being heaped upon your head, it is from the 
mercy seat, where that magnanimous man is 
retaliating upon you. Now not Paul himself ever 
magnified his office more or better than that. And 
it was in that very same way that our Lord magni¬ 
fied His royal priesthood when He had on His 
crown of thorns on the cross, and when His shame 
covered Him as a robe and a diadem in the sight of 
God, and when He interceded and said—“ They 
know not what they do." 

4. And then there is this fine and noble thing 
about prayer also, that the acceptableness of it, 
and the power of it, are in direct proportion to the 
secrecy and the spirituality of it. As its stealth 
is : as its silence is : as its hiddenness away with 


12 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


God is : as its unsuspectedness and undeservedness 
with men is : as its pure goodness, pure love, and 
pure goodwill are—so does prayer perform its 
magnificent part when it is alone with God. The 
true closet of the true saint of God is not built of 
stone and lime. The secret place of God, and His 
people, is not a thing of wood and iron, and bolts 
and bars. At the same time, Christ did say —Shut 
your door. And in order to have the Holy Ghost all 
to himself, and to be able to give himself up wholly 
—body, soul and spirit—to the Holy Ghost, the 
man after God’s own heart in prayer always as a 
matter of fact builds for himself a little sanctuary, 
all his own ; not to shut God in, but to shut all that 
is not of God out. He builds a house for God, 
before he has as yet built a house for himself. You 
would not believe it about that man of secret 
prayer. When you see and hear him, he is the 
poorest, the meekest, the most contrite, and the 
most silent of men : and you rebuke him because 
he so trembles at God’s word. If you could but 
see him when he is alone with the King ! If you 
could but see his nearness and his boldness ! You 
would think that he and the King’s Son had been 
born and brought up together—such intimacies, 
and such pass-words, are exchanged between them. 
You would wonder, you would not believe your 
eyes and your ears. If you saw him on his knees 
you would see a sight. Look! He is in the 


THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER 13 


Audience Chamber. Look ! He is in the Council 
Chamber now. He has a seat set for him among 
the peers. He is set down among the old nobility 
of the Empire. The King will not put on His signet 
ring to seal a command, till your friend has been 
heard. “ Command Me,” the King says to him. 
“ Ask Me,” He says, “ for the things of My sons : 
command Me things to come concerning them ” ! 
And, as if that were not enough, that man of all¬ 
prayer is still on his knees. He is “ wrestling ” on 
his knees. There is no enemy there that I can 
see. There is nothing and no one that I can see 
near him: and yet he wrestles like a mighty man. 
What is he doing with such a struggle ? Doing ? 
Do you not know what he is doing ? He is moving 
heaven and earth. The man is removing moun¬ 
tains. He is casting this mountain, and that, into 
the midst of the sea. He is casting down thrones. 
He is smiting old empires of time to pieces. Yes : 
he is wrestling indeed ! For he is wrestling now 
with God ; and now with man : now with death; 
and now with hell. See ! the day breaks over his 
place of prayer I See! the Kingdom of God begins 
to come in on the earth ! What a spot is that ! 
What plots are hatched there ! What conspiracies 
are planned there ! How dreadful is this place ! 
Let us escape for our life out of it! Is that man, 
in there with God, your friend ? Can you trust 
him with God ? Will he speak about you when he 


14 LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

is in audience ? And what will he say ? Has he 
anything against you ? Have you anything on 
your conscience, or in your heart, against him ? 
Then I would not be you, for a world ! But no ! 
Hear him ! What is that he says ? I declare I 
hear your name, and your children’s names ! And 
the King stretches forth His sceptre, and your 
friend touches it. He has " commanded ” his God 
for you. He has “ asked concerning ” you and your 
sons. Such access, such liberty, such power, such 
prevalency, such a magnificent office has he, who 
has been made of God a King and a Priest unto 
God. 

5. And, then, to cap and to crown it all—the 
supreme magnanimity, and the superb generosity 
of God, to its top perfection, is seen in this—in the 
men He selects, prepares for Himself, calls, con¬ 
secrates, and clothes with the mitre and with the 
ephod, and with the breastplate. It is told in the 
Old Testament to the blame of Jeroboam, that “ he 
made an house of high places, and made priests of 
the lowest of the people, which were not of the 
sons of Levi.” But what is written and read in the 
Levitical Law, to Jeroboam’s blame, that very 
same thing, and in these very same words, God’s 
saints are this Sabbath day singing in their thousands 
to His praise before the throne of God and the 
Lamb. For, ever since the day of Christ, it has 
been the lowest of the people—those lowest, that 


THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER 15 


is, in other men's eyes, and in their own—it has 
been the poor and the despised, and the meek, and 
the hidden, and the down-trodden, and the silent, 
who have had secret power and privilege with God, 
and have prevailed. It was so, sometimes, even in 
the Old Testament. The New Testament some¬ 
times broke up through the Old ; and in nothing 
more than in this in the men,—and in their mothers, 
—who were made Kings and Priests unto God. 
“ The Lord maketh poor," sang Samuel’s mother, 
" and maketh rich: He bringeth low, and lifteth up. 
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth 
up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among 
princes, and to make them inherit the throne of 
glory.’’ And the mother of our great High Priest 
Himself sang, as she sat over His manger—“ He 
hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden. . . . 
He hath filled the hungry with good things ; and 
the rich hath He sent empty away.’’ This, then, 
is the very topmost glory, and the very supremest 
praise of God—the men, from among men, that He 
takes, and makes of them Kings and Priests unto 
God. Let all such men magnify their office ; and 
let them think and speak and sing magnificently of 
their God! 


II 


THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER 

“Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.”— 
Is. lvii. 15. 

I have had no little difficulty in finding a fit text, 
and a fit title, for my present discourse. The 
subject of my present discourse has been running in 
my mind, and has been occupying and exercising 
my heart, for many years ; or all my fife indeed. 
And even yet, I feel quite unable to put the truth 
that is in my mind at all properly before you. My 
subject this morning is what I may call, in one 
word,—but a most inadequate and unsatisfactory 
word,—the Geometry of Prayer. That is to say, 
the directions and the distances, the dimensions 
and the measurements that, of necessity, enter into 
all the conceptions of our devotional life. “ Man 
never knows how anthropomorphic he is,” says 
Goethe. That is to say, we do not enough reflect 
how much we measure everything by ourselves. 
We do not enough reflect how much we measure 
God Himself by ourselves. Nor can we help our¬ 
selves in that respect. If we are to measure God 

16 


THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER 


17 


at all, we must measure Him by ourselves. We 
cannot do otherwise. We cannot escape ourselves, 
even when we think and speak of God. We 
cannot rise above ourselves. We cannot cease 
to be ourselves. And thus it is, that when 
we think or speak of God, if we are to think 
and speak of Him at all, we must think and 
speak of Him—as the schools say —“ in terms of 
ourselves.” 

Nor are we to take blame to ourselves on that 
account. For that is our very nature. That is 
how we have been made by our Maker. That is 
the law of our creation, and we cannot set that law 
aside ; far less can we rise above it. God Himself 
speaks to us in the language of men, and not in the 
language of the Godhead. In our reason, and in 
our conscience, and in His Word, and in His Son, 
God speaks to us in the language of men. He 
anthropomorphises Himself to us, in order that we 
may see and believe all that, concerning Himself, 
which He intends us to receive and believe. And 
we must go to Him in the same way in which He 
comes to us. All our approaches to God, in prayer 
and in praise, must be made in those forms of 
thought and of speech, in those ideas and concep¬ 
tions, that are possible to us as His creatures. All 
the same, it is well for us to keep this warning well 
in mind, that we never know how anthropo¬ 
morphic we are, in all our approaches to Him Whom 


18 LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

no man can approach unto, Whom no man hath 
seen nor can see. 

The moral and spiritual world is essentially and 
fundamentally different from the physical and 
material world. The geographical and astronom¬ 
ical dimensions and distances of the material 
world bear no manner of relation at all to the 
dimensions and the distances—so to call them— 
of the spiritual world. We speak of Roman miles 
and of German miles and of English miles, we speak 
of geographical or of nautical miles, when we take 
our measurements of the material world. But 
the distances and the directions of the moral and 
spiritual world cannot be laid down and limited 
in such miles as these. When Holy Scripture 
speaks of the “ highest heaven,” it does not speak 
mathematically and astronomically, but intellectu¬ 
ally, morally and spiritually. The highest heaven 
is not so called because it is away up above and 
beyond all the stars that we see. It is called the 
highest heaven, because it is immeasurably and 
inconceivably above and beyond us in its blessed¬ 
ness and in its glory ; in its truth, in its love, in its 
peace, and in its joy in God. And on the other 
hand, the deepest hell, that the Bible so often 
warns us against, is not some dark pit sunk away 
down out of sight in the bowels of the earth. The 
true bottomless pit is in every one of us. That 
horrible pit, with its miry clay, is sunk away down 


THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER 


10 


in the unsearchable depths of every evil heart. 
And again, when it is told us in the Word of God 
that the Son of God came down from heaven to 
earth in order to redeem us to God with His own 
blood, we are not to think of Him as having left 
some glorious place far “ beyond the bright blue 
sky/’ as the children's hymn has it. Wherein 
then did His humiliation consist ? “ His humilia¬ 

tion consisted in His being born, and that in a low 
condition, made under the law, undergoing the 
miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed 
death of the Cross." That was His descent from 
heaven to earth ; and it was a descent of a kind, 
and of a degree, that no measuring-line of man 
can tell the depth of it, or the distress of it, or the 
dreadful humiliation of it. 

Now to expound and illustrate some outstanding 
Scriptures on prayer,—in the light of this great 
principle,—take, first, this fundamental Scripture— 
“ Our Father which art in Heaven Now Heaven, 
here, is not the sky. It is not the heaven of sun 
and moon and stars. Heaven here is the experi¬ 
enced and enjoyed presence of God,—wherever 
that is. Heaven here is our Father’s house,— 
wherever that is. Heaven is high up above the 
earth,—yes ; but let it be always remembered and 
realised that it is high up, as Almighty God is high 
up, in His Divine Nature, above mortal man in his 
human nature. It is high up as goodness is high 


20 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


up above evil and as perfect blessedness is high up 
above the uttermost misery. As often as we kneel 
down again, and begin to pray, we are to think of 
ourselves as at a far greater distance from God 
than we ought to be, and now desire to be. All 
true prayer is a rising up and a drawing near to God : 
not in space indeed ; not in measurable miles ; but 
in mind, and in heart, and in spirit. “ Oh for a 
mountain to pray on ! ” thou criest. “ A mountain, 
and a temple on the top of it; high and exalted, 
so that I might be nearer God, and that God might 
hear me better ; for He dwelleth on high! ” Yes, 
He dwelleth on high ; but all the time, He hath 
respect to the humble. “ Wouldst thou pray in 
His temple ? ” says Augustine; “ then pray within 
thyself ; for thou thyself art the true temple of the 
living God.” And great authority on these matters 
as Augustine is, a still greater Authority than he is 
has said, “ Believe Me, the hour cometh when ye 
shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, 
worship the Father. The hour cometh and now is 
when the true worshippers shall worship the Father 
in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seeketh such 
to worship Him. God is a spirit: and they that 
worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in 
truth.” And further on in the same spiritual 
Gospel, we read this : " These words spake Jesus, 
and lifted up His eyes to heaven.” The Son of God, 
who was all the time in Heaven, came so truly 


THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER 


21 


down among the sons of men, that He lifted up His 
eyes when He prayed to His Father just as we our¬ 
selves do. Though He knew that the kingdom of 
Heaven was within Him, and not in the skies above 
Him, yet, like us, He lifted up His eyes when He 
prayed. He was in all points made like unto His 
brethren ; and in no point more so than in this 
point of prayer. It is built deep into our nature, 
as we are the creatures of Almighty God, that we 
are to lift our eyes, and look up, when we pray. 
And the Son of God took on our human nature, 
and prayed as we pray, kneeling down and looking 
up, falling down, and lifting up strong crying and 
tears. So anthropomorphic did the Son of God 
become, so truly was He made of a woman, and 
made under the whole law and the whole practice 
of prayer, as well as under every other law of devout 
and reverential men. 

And then, to take an illustration of all this from 
the opposite pole of things: “ And not many days 
after, the younger son gathered all together, and 
took his journey into a far country , and there wasted 
his substance with riotous living.” Every in¬ 
telligent child, who is paying attention, knows that 
the far country into which that prodigal son went, 
was not far away from his home, as China and 
India, Africa and America are far away from Edin¬ 
burgh. He did not travel to that far country by 
any caravan of camels, or by any ship with sails. 


22 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


That far country was far from his father’s house 
not in miles, but in bad habits. The far country 
was not so many hundreds of thousands of miles 
away. Its great distance consisted in so many bad 
secrets that he never could tell at home ; till they 
had to be told, and paid for by his father, if his son 
was not to be taken to prison. I myself have known 
that spoiled and prodigal and now far-away son, 
oftener than once. I have baptized him ; and I 
have recommended the Kirk Session to admit him 
to the Table. And I have written him, to Australia, 
and to America, and have sent him books with his 
name written upon them, and have never got an 
answer. The last time I heard of him, he was 
breaking stones for eighteen pence a day. That, 
fathers and mothers, is the far country of our Lord’s 
parable. 

Then again, take this for another illustration of 
my morally geometrical and spiritually topo¬ 
graphical argument. “ Out of the depths have I 
cried unto Thee, O Lord. Out of the belly of hell 
cried I. Out of an horrible pit , out of the miry 
clay.” Now just what depths were these, do you 
suppose ? Where were those depths dug ? And 
how deep were they ? Were they like the dungeon 
of Malchiah, the son of Hammelech, that was in 
the court of [the prison ? Oh no ! When Jeremiah 
sank in that deep mire he was in a clean and a sweet 
bed compared with that which every sinner digs 


THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER 


23 


for himself in his own unclean heart and in his own 
unclean life. The horrible pit and the miry clay 
of the sinful Psalmist was dug with his own suicidal 
hands, deep down in his God-forsaken heart. Oh, 
take care in time ! You men who are still young ! 
Oh, be warned in time, and by those who can testify 
to you, and can tell you about the wages of sin ; 
for the wages of sin is both banishment from the 
presence of God here, and it is the second death 
itself hereafter. 

Then again, “ Come unto Me, all ye that labour 
and are heavy laden.’' Now, just how do we come 
to Christ ? We come in this way. Not on our 
feet, but on our knees. “Not on our feet,” says 
Augustine, “ but on our affections.” When we are 
burdened in our minds ; when we are oppressed 
with manifold cares and sorrows ; when we are 
ill-used, humiliated, despised, trampled upon; 
when we are weary of the world and of ourselves ; 
and then, when, instead of rebelling and raging 
and repining, we accept our lot as laid on us by 
God, and according to His invitation take all our 
burden to Christ in prayer,—that is the way to 
come to Him. That is to say, we come from 
pride to humility ; and from a heart tossed with 
tempest to a harbour of rest and peace ; and from 
rebellion to resignation ; and from a life of unbelief 
to a life of faith and love. Come unto Me, says 
Christ to us, for I have all that rest, and all that 


24 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


peace in My own heart; and I will share it all 
with you. We do not come to Him by changing 
the land, or the city, or the neighbourhood, or the 
house, in which we have hitherto lived. We come 
to Him by changing our mind and our heart and 
our whole disposition : or rather, by coming to Him 
in prayer, and in holy obedience, He produces all 
these changes in our hearts and in our lives. “ Come 
unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
and I will give you rest. For I am meek and lowly 
in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls/' 
And it is in this same spiritual and emotional, 
and not in any astronomical or topographical sense, 
that the sorrowful prophets and psalmists cry 
continually, “ Bow down Thine ear, O Lord, and 
hear me.” When you are lying, quite prostrate, 
on your sick-bed ; and when you can only whisper 
your wants, and scarcely that; then your doctor 
and your nurse bow down their ear to hear your 
whispered prayer. And so it is with your sick soul. 
" Bow down Thine ear, 0 God,” you sigh and 
say. “ Bow down Thine ear, and hear me ; for I 
am brought very low. I am full of pain and sores : 
I am full of sin and death.” “ No poor creature,” 
you say, “ was ever so fallen and so broken, and so 
far beyond all help of man as I am.” And you 
continue to sigh and cry, night and day; till at 
last you burst out with this song, " I waited 
patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me 


THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER 


25 


and heard my cry. And He hath put a new song 
in my mouth, even praise unto our God : many 
shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord.” 

And it is in the same moral and spiritual, and 
neither local nor topographical sense, that it is so 
often said that God is nigh to such-and-such men, 
and is far off, and turned away, from such-and-such 
other men. As in the text : “ Thus saith the 
high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose 
name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, 
with him also that is of a contrite and humble 
spirit; to revive the spirit of the humble, and to 
revive the heart of the contrite ones.” And again 
in the 34th Psalm: “ The Lord is nigh unto them 
that are of a broken heart, and saveth such as be 
of a contrite spirit.” And St. Peter puts the same 
truth in this way : “Yea, all of you be clothed 
with humility ; for God resisteth the proud, and 
giveth grace to the humble.” 

And again, in the same moral and spiritual and 
not locomotive sense, David has this : “ Who shall 
ascend into the hill of the Lord ? or who shall 
stand in His holy place ? He that hath clean hands 
and a pure heart : who hath not lifted up his soul 
unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully.” And so on, 
all up and down the Word of God, the attitudes 
and the movements of the body, and the directions 
and the distances, the dimensions and the measure¬ 
ments of the material world, are all carried over 


26 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


into the life of the soul and especially into the 
devotional life of the soul. And when that is once 
well understood, and always remembered and 
realised, great light will fall on the Bible teaching, 
and on the Bible precepts, about prayer. And our 
own life of prayer will be immensely enriched and 
refreshed : it will be filled with new interest, and 
with new intelligence, in many ways ; as you will 
soon experience, if you follow out and practise the 
teaching that these great Scriptures have offered 
you. 

Now, my brethren, much and long as I have 
thought on this subject, and with care and labour 
as I have composed this discourse, I am keenly 
sensible of how immature and unfinished my treat¬ 
ment of this great topic has been. And then, 
such subjects can only be set before a specially 
intelligent and a specially interested and a 
specially devotional audience. I entirely believe 
that I have such an audience, to a great extent, 
and therefore, I hope that you will take away 
with you these imperfect reasonings and illustra¬ 
tions of mine this morning; and will faith¬ 
fully and thoughtfully and perseveringly apply 
them to your own reading of the devotional parts 
of Holy Scripture, as well as to your own public 
and private exercises of prayer and praise. The 
subject demands and deserves all my might and 
all your might too—both as preacher and hearers ; 


THE GEOMETRY OF PRAYER 


27 


for it is our very life. It came to pass that as He 
Himself was praying in a certain place, lifting up 
His eyes and His hands to Heaven,—when He 
ceased, one of His disciples came to meet Him, and 
said to Him, “ Lord, teach us to pray.” Now, he 
who teaches us a true lesson in prayer, whether it 
is Christ Himself, or David, or Paul, or Luther, or 
Andrewes, or our mother, or our father, or our 
minister, or whosoever ; he who gives us a real 
and a true lesson both how to pray, and how to 
continue and increase in prayer,—he does us a 
service such that this life will only see the beginning 
of it; the full benefit of his lesson will only be truly 
seen and fully acknowledged by us when we enter 
on the service of God in that City where they “ serve 
Him day and night in His temple.” For there we 
shall see His face ; and there His name shall be in 
our foreheads. Amen. 


Ill 


THE HEART OF MAN AND THE 
HEART OF GOD 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. i. 

” Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart 
before Him: God is a refuge for us.”— Ps. lxii. 8. 

Ever since the days of St. Augustine, it has been a 
proverb that God has made the heart of man for 
Himself, and that the heart of man finds no true 
rest till it finds its rest in God. But long before 
the days of St. Augustine, the Psalmist had said 
the same thing in the text. The heart of man, 
the Psalmist had said, is such that it can pour itself 
out nowhere but before God. In His sovereignty, 
in His wisdom, and in His love, God has made the 
heart of man so that at its deepest—but for Him¬ 
self—it is absolutely solitary and alone. So much 
so that, 

Not even the tenderest heart, and next our own, 

Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh. 

They see us smile, and they hear us sigh, but the 
reasons why we smile or why we sigh are fully 
known to God alone. 

Now we all have hearts. Whatever else we have 

28 


HEART OF MAN AND HEART OF GOD 29 


or have not, we all have hearts ; and all our hearts 
are of the same secret, solitary, undiscovered, un¬ 
satisfied kind. And then, along with our hearts, 
we all have God. Wherever in all the world there 
is a human heart, God also is there. And He is 
there in order to have that heart poured out before 
Him. And out of that, out of the aloneness of the 
human heart, and out of the nearness of God to 
every human heart, there immediately arises this 
supreme duty to every man who has a heart,—that 
he shall at all times pour his heart out before God. 
It is not the duty and privilege of psalmists and 
great saints only. It is every man's duty, and 
every man’s privilege. And, indeed, all our duties 
to God are already summed up in this one great 
duty ; and all our privileges are held out to us at 
once in this unspeakable privilege. “ Trust in 
Him at all times : ye people, pour out your heart 
before Him : God is a refuge for us.” 

Now the whole profit of this fine text to us will 
lie in our particular application of it to ourselves. 
It is with this view that the text has been written. 
The text rose, at first, out of David’s experience, 
and it is offered to us for our experience also. That 
is the reason why those holy men of old wrote out, 
to all the world, their most secret experiences. 
They were moved to do so by the Holy Ghost in 
order that we might learn to follow them in their 
walk with God, and in their deepest spiritual life. 


30 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


Come then, my brethren, and let us take lessons 
from those saints of God in their high and holy 
art. Let us go to their divine school, and learn of 
them how we also are to pour our hearts out before 
God. And let us take our first lesson from David 
in this fine psalm now open before us. When we 
really study the lesson he has set to us, we easily 
see how David came to be so tempted to bad passions 
and to evil thoughts of all kinds ; to revenge and 
retaliation against his enemies, and to doubt and 
despair of God’s fatherly attention and care. As 
we also are often tempted in our adverse circum¬ 
stances ; and that, in ways and at times that, 
like David, we can tell to no one. No man, we say 
with David, cares for our souls. But then, that is 
just our opportunity. That is just the very moment 
for which God has been working and waiting in our 
case. Do not let us miss it. Our immortal soul 
is in it. Our eternal life is in it. Only let us pour 
out all our loneliness and all our distress, and all 
our gloom, before God, as David did, and all will 
immediately be well. For either, He will remove 
our trouble at once and altogether ; or else, He will 
do better,—He will make His love and His peace 
so to fill our heart that we will break out with 
David and will sing: “ In God is my salvation 
and my glory; the rock of my strength, and my 
refuge is in God.” 

And, as with all our trouble, so let us do with all 


HEART OF MAN AND HEART OF GOD 31 


our sins. For our sin is the mother of all our trouble : 
get rid of the mother, and you will soon get rid of 
her offspring. And the only way to get rid of sin— 
as well as of sorrow—is to pour it out before God. 
For one thing, you are often tormented and polluted, 
—are you not ?—with sinful thoughts. Now as 
soon as they enter, as soon as they arise,—pour 
them out before God. Pour them out before they 
are well in. Cleanse your heart of all unclean 
thoughts, of all angry and revengeful thoughts ; 
of all envious and jealous thoughts ; of all malicious 
and murderous thoughts,—sweep them out as you 
would be saved. Repudiate them. Deny them. 
Denounce them. Declare before God, as He shall 
judge you, that all these evil thoughts of yours 
are not yours at all. Protest to Him that it is 
some enemy of yours and His who always puts them, 
somehow, into your heart. And pour them out like 
poison. Pour them out like leprosy. For poison 
and leprosy can but kill the body ; but bad thoughts, 
entertained in the heart, will kill both body and 
soul in hell. Let no sinful thought settle in your 
heart for a moment. Call aloud on God the instant 
you discover its presence. Wherever you are, and 
however you are employed, and in whatever com¬ 
pany,—that moment call on God. That moment 
pour out your heart before Him. He knows all 
that is in your heart in that moment of temptation; 
and He waits to see what you will say to Him 


32 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


about your heart, and what you will do with it. 
Disappoint Him not. Neglect Him not. Dis¬ 
please Him not. He has told you a thousand times 
what you are to do at that moment. Do it. Do 
what David did. Do what God's tempted and 
tried people are doing every moment all around 
about you. “ Trust in Him at all times : ye people, 
pour out your heart before Him: God is a refuge 
for us.” 

“ My sin is ever before me,” says David in his 
greatest psalm. And as often as his sin comes up 
again before him, he makes another psalm concern¬ 
ing his sin and pours it out again before God. Do 
the same. Do like David. His awful story is told 
for your salvation. Speak then, to God, like David. 
Say to God, like David, that that former sin of 
yours is ever before you also. Say to Him that the 
more you cleanse it away,—nay, the more He Him¬ 
self cleanses it away,—the more somehow it is ever 
before you. Say to Him that you cannot under¬ 
stand it, but that, the more you repent and turn 
from your sin, the more you remember your own 
evil ways, and your doings that were not good ; 
and, the more you wash your hands in innocency, 
the more you loathe yourself for your iniquities 
and for your abominations. As often as such 
terrible experiences as these visit you,—just remem¬ 
ber poor sin-pursued David, and pour out all the 
undying remorse of your heart again and again 


HEART OF MAN AND HEART OF GOD 33 


before God. When your guilty conscience awakens 
again on you, like the fury it is ; when you are not 
able to look up for absolute shame ; even in the 
hour of absolute despair ; even when death and 
hell would almost be a hiding-place to you in your 
agony,—fall down, and pour out all that before 
God. For it is neither death nor hell that is a 
refuge for you. Almighty God, and Almighty God 
alone, is your refuge and the rock of your salvation, 
and though you may have poured all that sin out 
of your heart ten thousand times before,—pour it 
all out again. And say to Him in your excuse 
that your sin is ever before you. Ask Him to whom 
you can go. Ask Him, tell Him, what is His name, 
and what is His Son’s name. And, as you pour 
out your heart as never before, say as never before,— 

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in Thee! 

“ And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the 
wind, and a covert from the tempest : as rivers of 
water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock 
in a weary land.” 

“ At all times,” is a most precious expression. 
And as God would have it, for your instruction and 
for mine, as to “ times,” I came the other day upon 
these half-legible entries in an old black-letter Diary. 
And indeed it was when I was spelling my way 
through the rusty pages of that old diary that it 
came into my head to preach this sermon. The 
3 


34 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


entries that specially bear on this text are these,— 
I copy verbatim : 

“The fourth day of the week —Wednesday. All 
day, my heart has been full of wonder and praise 
at God’s extraordinary goodness to me. I went 
back and back all day on the Lord’s leading. Till 
all day my heart has been one pool of love and 
admiration as I poured it out before God.” 

“The fifth day of the week —Thursday,” writes 
this diarist, “ is always a day of peculiar temptation 
to me, and to-day has been no exception. I could 
not go up into my bed till I had poured out all the 
corruptions of my heart before God. And because 
I could not sleep, I rose and went over the evil day 
again, and made a more and more clean breast of it 
all before God. 

“ Die Dom .” (a Latin contraction for the Lord’s 
Day). “ Passed a poor day, but the clouds scattered 
before sunset.” 

I was much struck with this, as I think you will 
be. “ Communion Day. For some time past I have 
had to live in the same house, and even to eat at the 
same table, with one I cannot bear with. I went on 
sinning against him in my heart till the fast day. 
When the Lord sent me a message by His servant 
out of the 62nd Psalm ”—our psalm, you see !— 
“ and I was able to lay His message to heart. On 
the fast night I went to specially secret prayer and 
poured out again and again and again my whole evil 


HEART OF MAN AND HEART OF GOD 35 


heart before God. Next morning I found it easy to 
be civil and even benevolent to my neighbour. And 
I felt at the Lord’s Table to-day as if I would yet 
live to love that man. I feel sure I will.” Yes, 
ye people ! Pour out your heart in that way before 
Him at all times, and on all the days of the week ; 
God is a refuge for us also. 

But with all that about God and about His people, 
psalmists, and saints since then, the half has not 
been told. After all that, I have something still to 
say that will add immensely to the wonder and the 
praise of the text. And it is this. We do not, 
properly speaking, pour out our hearts before God : 
we pour our hearts upon God. We do not pour out 
our hearts before His feet : we pour out our hearts 
upon His heart. We do that with one another. 
When we pour out a confession or a complaint or 
a petition before any one we try to get at his heart. 
We try to get at his ear indeed ; but it is really at 
his heart that our aim is ; and much more so with 
God. We throw ourselves at His feet indeed; 
but, beyond His feet, we throw ourselves into His 
bosom. We press and pass through all His angels 
round about Him. We shut our eyes to all the 
blinding glory. We pass in through all His power, 
and all His majesty, and all His other overwhelming 
surroundings,—and we are not content till we come 
to His heart, to God’s very, very heart. What a 
thought ! Oh, all ye thinking men! What a 


30 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


thought! What a heart must God’s heart be! 
What knowledge it must have! What pity it 
must hold! What compassion ! What love! 
How deep it must be ! How wide ! How tender ! 
What a mystery ! What a universe we belong to ! 
What creatures we are ! and what a Creator we 
have ! and what a God! “ Oh, the depth of the 

riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! 
How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways 
past finding out! For of Him, and through Him, 
and to Him are all things, to whom be glory for 
ever. Amen.” 

And then, over and above all that, there is this 
to crown it all. Not only do God’s saints pour out 
their hearts upon His heart: He pours out His 
heart upon their hearts. His Son has come to us 
straight out of His Father’s heart. His Eternal 
Son is ever in, and He is ever coming forth from, 
the bosom of the Father. And then the Holy Ghost 
comes into our hearts and brings God’s heart with 
Him. Which heart, it cannot be too often said, 
He, the Holy Ghost, indeed is. That, 0 many 
of my brethren, that is God’s very heart, already 
poured out this day upon your heart ! That soften¬ 
ing of heart under the Word, that strong, sweet, 
tender, holy, heavenly spirit that has taken posses¬ 
sion of your heart in this house. What is that ? 
What can it be, but God’s very heart beginning to 
drop its overflowing strength and sweetness into 


HEART OF MAN AND HEART OF GOD 37 


your open and uplifted heart ? Pour out your 
thanks for that outpouring of His heart upon you. 
And pour out your prayer for still more of His Holy 
Spirit. Beseech Him not to take His Holy Spirit 
away from you : say to Him that, in your estimation, 
His loving-kindness is far, far better than life. Say 
to Him that you have seen His power and His glory 
this day, as His saints are wont to see Him in His 
sanctuary; and as He sees that you truly desire 
it and truly enjoy it, He will say to you also : 
“ A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will 
I put within you. I will put My Spirit ”—My own 
Holy Spirit!—“ within you, and cause you to walk 
in my statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments 
and do them.” 

I will not dwell on them, but I must mention 
four reflections that have been much in my mind 
all through this meditation. 

First, the greatness, the all but Divine greatness 
of the heart of man. I do not know that the highest 
and most rewarded archangel of them all has an 
honour and excellency of grace bestowed upon him 
anything like this,—to be able to exchange hearts, 
so to speak, with God : we pouring our heart upon 
God, and He pouring His heart out upon us. 

Second, the unspeakable happiness, even in this 
life, of the man who pours out his heart, at all times , 
upon God. 

Third, the awful folly—were it nothing worse— 


38 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


of carrying about a heart, and hiding a heart and all 
it contains, and never pouring it out upon God, even 
when permitted and commanded so to do. 

And fourth, never for a day, never for an hour, 
forget this golden Scripture: “ Trust in Him at all 
times : ye people, pour out your heart before Him : 
God is a refuge for us.” 


PART II 

SOME BIBLE TYPES OF PRAYER 








IV 


JACOB—WRESTLING 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ Jacob called the name of the place Peniel.”—G en. xxxii. 30. 

All the time that Jacob was in Padan-aram we 
search in vain for prayer, for praise, or for piety 
of any kind in Jacob’s life. We read of his marriage, 
and of his great prosperity, till the land could no 
longer hold him. But that is all. It is not said in 
so many words indeed that Jacob absolutely denied 
and forsook the God of his fathers : it is not said 
that he worshipped idols in Padan-aram : that is 
not to be supposed—only, he wholly neglected, 
avoided, and lived without God in that land. In 
the days of his youth, and when he was on his 
fugitive way from his father’s house, Jacob had 
passed through an experience that promised to us 
that Jacob, surely above all men, would ever after 
be a man of prayer, and a man of praise, and a man 
of a close walk with God, a man who would always 
pay his vow wherever he went. But Bethel—and 
all that passed at Bethel—was clean forgotten in 
Padan-aram; where Jacob increased exceedingly, 

4i 




42 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and had much cattle, and camels, and maid-servants, 
and men-servants. 

Time went on in this way till the Lord said unto 
Jacob: “ Return unto the land of thy fathers and 
to thy kindred ; and I will be with thee.” And 
Jacob rose up to go to Isaac his father in the 
land of Canaan. But every step that Jacob took 
brought him nearer to the land of Edom also : 
where Esau dwelt with all his armed men about 
him. And that brought back all Jacob’s early 
days to his mind, as they had not been in his mind 
now for many years; till, by the time Jacob arrived at 
the Jabbok, he was in absolute terror at the thought 
of Esau. But Jacob never lacked resource : and 
at the Jabbok he made a halt, and there he did this. 
He took of that which came to his hand a present 
for Esau his brother. For he said, “ I will appease 
him with the present that goeth before me, and 
afterward I will see his face : peradventure he will 
accept of me.” But, to Jacob’s great terror, Esau 
never looked at Jacob’s present, but put on his 
armour in silence, and came posting northwards 
at the head of four hundred Edomite men. Had 
Jacob had nothing but his staff with which he 
passed over Jordan, his mind would have been more 
at rest. But with all these women and children 
and cattle—was ever a man taken in such a cruel 
trap ? And he took them and sent them over the 
brook, and sent over all that he had. And when 


JACOB—WRESTLING 


43 


the night fell, Jacob was left alone. Till every 
plunge of the angry Jabbok, and every roar of the 
midnight storm, made Jacob feel the smell of Esau’s 
hunting coat, and the blow of his heavy hand. 
Whether in the body, or whether out of the body, 
Jacob could never tell. It was Esau, and it was 
not Esau. It was God Himself, and it was not 
God. It was God and Esau—both together. Till 
Jacob to the day of his death never could tell 
who that terrible wrestler really was. But as the 
morning broke, and as he departed, the wrestler 
from heaven said to Jacob, “ Thy name shall be 
called no more Jacob, but Israel.” And he 
blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of 
the place Peniel: which by interpretation is The 
face of God : for he said, “ I have seen God face to 
face, and my life is preserved.” 

“ Lord, teach us to pray,” petitioned the disciple 
in the text. Well, we see here how the whole of 
Jacob’s life was laid out, and overruled, and visited 
of God in order to teach Jacob to pray, in order to 
make Jacob a prince in prayer. And all his long 
and astonishing story, with all its ups and downs, 
is preserved and is told to us, to teach us also how 
to pray. Lord, teach us to pray ! 

i. Well, the first lesson we are taught out of Jacob 
is this—that as long as all goes well with us, we, 
too, are tempted to neglect God : we seldom, or 
never pray—to be called prayer. As Huysman 


44 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


says in En route, “ The rich, the healthy, the happy 
seldom pray.” You would have said that Jacob 
had had such an upbringing and had fallen into 
such transgressions, all followed by such mercies, 
and by such manifestations of God, that he could 
never again forget God. You would have said 
that. But no sooner was Jacob safely out of Esau’s 
reach: no sooner had Jacob’s affairs begun to 
prosper in Padan-aram than Jacob’s conscience 
of sin fell asleep. And Jacob’s conscience would 
have slept on till the day of judgment had God and 
Esau left Jacob alone. And that is our own case 
exactly. “ The heart is deceitful,” says the prophet, 
“ who can know it ? ” Well, we know it so far. 
We know it thus far, at any rate—that we easily 
forgive ourselves the hurt we have done to other 
men. We have short memories for our own sins, 
and for other men’s sufferings. Only once in a long 
while do we remember, and take to heart what we 
have done to other men. We have a long memory 
for what other men have done to us : but all that 
is changed when we are the wrong-doers. Let those 
who have suffered at our hands be long enough 
out of our sight, and at a safe enough distance, and 
we say, Soul, take thine ease. From the day of 
the barter of the birthright, down to that arresting 
night at the Jabbok, Jacob had seen himself, and 
his share in all that bad business, with his own partial 
and indulgent eyes. Whereas Esau had seen himself 


JACOB—WRESTLING 


45 


with his own injured and angry eyes : and, for 
once, God had seen all that evil transaction with 
Esau’s eyes also. Only, all the time that Jacob 
prospered in Padan-aram, God was as if He had not 
seen. God “ winked,” as we say, at Jacob’s sin 
till Jacob was at the top of his prosperity, and then 
God opened His eyes on Jacob’s sin, and He opened 
Jacob’s eyes also. If you will read Jacob’s Padan- 
aram life with attention—with your eye on the 
object—you will see that Jacob had no time in 
Padan-aram for prayer—to be called prayer. “ Thus 
I was,” complains Jacob, “ in the day the drought 
consumed me, and the frost by night : and my 
sleep departed from mine eyes. Thus have I been 
twenty years.” You know it yourselves, and you 
complain about it. What with the pressure of 
domestic duties : what with the tremendous and 
cruel competition of modern business life : what 
with the too late hours of the best society in the 
city : what with the sports and games of your 
holiday: and what with the multitude of books and 
papers of all kinds that you must keep up with—sleep 
even, not to speak of salvation, departs from your 
eyes. “ Thus was I,” complained graceless Jacob. 

2. “So went the present over before Jacob : and 
himself lodged that night in the company.” But 
Jacob could not sleep. He could not he down even. 
He was in a thousand minds. He was tossed with 
tempest, and not comforted. And he rose up, and 


46 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


sent over the brook all that he had. One thing 
Jacob had quite determined on,—he would not return 
to Padan-aram. At any risk, he would set his face 
to go on to Canaan. And when he had taken the 
decisive step of crossing the Jabbok, and when his 
household had all laid them down to sleep—Jacob 
was left alone, and Jacob set himself to “ watch 
and pray.” Jacob, deliberately and of set purpose, 
prepared himself for a whole night of prayer. “ But 
thou,” said our Lord, “when thou prayest, enter 
into thy closet, and shut thy door.” Well, that 
was just what Jacob did that night, and I suspect 
Jacob, that he had not done so much as that for 
the past twenty years. Leave me alone, he said. 
Lie you down and sleep in safety, and I will take a 
lantern and a sword, and I will watch the sleeping 
camp myself to-night. And he did so. And that 
is the second lesson out of Jacob at the Jabbok. 
This lesson, namely : that there are seasons in our 
lives when true prayer demands time, and place, 
and preparation, and solitude. When we are full 
of some great piece of business; when a lawyer is 
at a dying man’s bedside taking down his last testa¬ 
ment ; when a minister is in the depths of the 
preparation of his sermon, and when the spirit of 
God is resting on him with power; when any really 
serious business has hold of us, we have no scruple 
in saying that we must be left alone. This, I say 
is the second lesson here. 


JACOB—WRESTLING 


47 


Let a long journey then—by land or sea—at one 
time, be set apart for prayer. A whole day some¬ 
times, a birthday, the anniversary of our engage¬ 
ment to be married, or of our marriage, or again an 
anniversary of some such matter as Jacob’s decep¬ 
tion of Esau, or of his flight, or what not. Every 
man’s life is full of “ days to be remembered.” 
Then let them be remembered,—and with delibera¬ 
tion and resolution and determination; and your 
life will yet be as well worth writing, and as well 
worth reading as Jacob’s life is. Insist that you 
are to be left alone sometimes in order that you 
may take a review of your past life, and at the 
same time a forecast of coming danger and death: 
and that will turn all the evil of your past life into 
positive good : that will take all the danger out of 
coming danger, and death itself out of fast approach¬ 
ing death. Make experiment: pray with delibera¬ 
tion, and with all proper preparation—and see ! 

3. Jacob, we are delighted to see, deliberately 
and resolutely set apart that whole night to prayer : 
and his prayer took him that whole night, and 
until the “ breaking of the day.” But, to do 
what ? Why did it take Jacob so long to offer 
his prayer ? Was God unwilling to hear Jacob ? 
No, that cannot be the true explanation. God was 
neither absent nor was He unwilling. God had 
come down to the Jabbok for this very purpose— 
to hear and to answer Jacob’s prayer, and to pre- 


48 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


serve Jacob’s life from Esau’s anger. God was 
ready to hear and to answer : but Jacob was not 
yet ready to ask aright. Jacob had twenty years 
of unbelief and self-forgiveness, and forgetfulness 
of Esau’s injury, and total neglect and want of 
practice in penitence, and humiliation, and sorrow 
for sin. Jacob had all that, somehow or other, 
to undo, and to get over, before his life could be 
preserved : and the wonder to me is that Jacob 
accomplished so much in such a short time. You 
must all know how hard it is to put yourself into 
your injured brother’s place, and how long it takes 
you to do it. It is very hard for you to see, and to 
confess that God is no respecter of persons. It is 
a terrible shock to you to be told—shall not the 
Judge of all the earth do right between you and 
your injured brother ? You know how hard, how 
cruel, it is to see yourself as others see you, and 
judge you : especially as those see you and judge 
you who have been hurt by you. It is like death 
and hell pulling your body and your soul to pieces 
to take to heart all your sin against your neighbour, 
as he takes it to his heart. And that is why Jacob 
at the Jabbok has such a large place in your Bible : 
because, what you have taken so many years to 
do, Jacob did at the Jabbok in as many hours. 
You surely all understand, and will not forget, 
what exactly it was that Jacob did beside that 
angry brook that night ? The evening sun set on 


JACOB—WRESTLING 


49 


Jacob sophisticating, and plotting, and planning 
how he could soften and bribe back to silence, if 
not to brotherly love, his powerful enemy, Esau ; 
but before the morning sun rose on Peniel, Jacob 
was at God’s feet—aye, and at Esau’s feet also— 
a broken-hearted, absolutely surrendered, absolutely 
silent and submissive penitent. “ In whose spirit 
there is no guile ... I acknowledged my sin unto 
Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. . . . For 
this shall every one that is godly pray unto Thee 
in a time when Thou mayest be found : surely in 
the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh 
unto him.” 

4. But Jacob at the Jabbok always calls up our 
Lord in Gethsemane. Now, why did our Lord need 
to spend so much of that Passover night alone in 
prayer ? and in such an agony of prayer, even unto 
blood ? He did not have the sins of His youth 
coming back on Him in the garden : nor did He 
have twenty years of neglect of God, and man, to 
get over. No. It was not that. But it was this. 
I speak it not of commandment, but by permission. 
It may have been this. I believe it was this. This. 
Human nature, at its best, in this life, is still so far 
from God—even after it has been redeemed, and 
renewed, and sanctified, and put under the power 
of the Holy Ghost for a lifetime—that, to reduce 
it absolutely down to its very last submission, and 
its very last surrender, and its very last obedience, 
4 


50 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


the very Son of God, Himself, had to drag His 
human heart to God’s feet, with all His might, and 
till His sweat was blood, with the awful agony of 
it. “ I have neglected Thee, O God, but I will 
enter into my own heart,” cries Lancelot Andrewes, 
“ I will come to Thee in the innermost marrow of 
my soul.” “ It is true prayer, it is importunate, 
persevering and agonising prayer that deciphers 
the hypocrite,” says Jonathan Edwards, repeating 
Job. “ My uncle,” says Coleridge’s nephew, “ when 
I was sitting by his bedside, very solemnly declared 
to me his conviction on this subject. ‘ Prayer,’ he 
said, * is the very highest energy of which the human 
heart is capable ’ : prayer, that is, with the total 
concentration of all the faculties. And the great 
mass of worldly men, and learned men, he pro¬ 
nounced absolutely incapable of prayer. ‘ To 
pray,’ he said, ' to pray as God would have us 
pray,—it is this that makes me to turn cold in 
my soul. Believe me, to pray with all your heart, 
and strength, that is the last, the greatest achieve¬ 
ment of the Christian’s warfare on this earth. 
Lord, teach us to pray! ’ And with that he 
burst into a flood of tears and besought me to pray 
for him ! Oh, what a light was there ! ” 

5. We understand now, and we willingly accept, 
and we will not forget Jacob’s new name of 
“ Israel.” Yes : it was meet and he was worthy. 
For he behaved himself like a prince of the Kingdom 


JACOB—WRESTLING 


51 


of Heaven that night. Prayer, my brethren, is 
princely work—prayer, that is, like Jacob’s prayer 
at the Jabbok. Prayer, at its best, is the noblest, 
the sublimest, the most magnificent, and stupendous 
act that any creature of God can perform on earth 
or in heaven. Prayer is far too princely a life for 
most men. It is high, and they are low, and they 
cannot attain to it. True prayer is colossal work. 
There were giants in those days. Would you be 
one of this royal race ? Would you stand in the 
lot of God’s princeliest elect at the end of your 
days ? And would you be numbered with His 
Son and with His choicest saints ? Then, pray. 

“ Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name : 
ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be 
full.” 


V 


MOSES—MAKING HASTE 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“And Moses made haste . . —Ex. xxxiv. 8. 

This passage is by far the greatest passage in the 
whole of the Old Testament. This passage is the 
parent passage, so to speak, of all the greatest 
passages of the Old Testament. This passage now 
open before us, the text and the context, taken 
together, should never be printed but in letters of 
gold a finger deep. There is no other passage to be 
set beside this passage till we come to the opening 
passages of the New Testament. That day, on 
which the Lord descended, and proclaimed to Moses 
the Name of the Lord, that was a day to be remem¬ 
bered and celebrated above the best days of the 
Old Testament. The only other days to be named 
beside that day were the day on which the Lord 
God created man in His own image ; and the day 
on which Jesus Christ was born ; and the day He 
died on the Cross, and the third day after that 
when He rose from the dead. And then, the only 
days we have to set beside those great days are 
these : the day we were born, taken along with the 

52 


MOSES—MAKING HASTE 


53 


day we were born again ; and that best of all our 
days, which we have still before us, that great day 
when we shall awaken in His likeness. These are 
the only days worthy to be named beside that great 
day when the Lord put Moses in the cleft of the 
rock, and covered him with His hand, and pro¬ 
claimed, and said, “ The Lord, the Lord God, 
merciful and gracious ” : and Moses made haste, 
and said, “ Take us for thine inheritance.” 

Now, what so draws us back to that Old Testa¬ 
ment day, to that Old Testament mount, this New 
Testament morning, is this : we find on that mount, 
that day, an answer and an example to that disciple 
who said, “ Lord, teach us to pray.” And that 
answer, and that example, are set before us in these 
three so impressive and so memorable words 
“ Moses made haste.” And thus it is that if we 
approach this text this morning in a devotional 
mind, and in a sufficiently teachable temper, we 
shall without doubt find lessons in it, and carry 
away lessons from it—lessons and encouragements 
and examples, and drawings to prayer and to 
God, lessons and encouragements and drawings 
that will abide with us, and influence us all our 
days,—all our days,—till our praying days are done. 

What was it, then, to begin with, that made Moses 
in such a “ haste ” to bow his head, and to worship, 
and to pray with such instancy at that moment ? 
Well, three things I see, and there may very well 


54 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


have been more that I do not see. But these three 
things,—Moses’ great need; God’s great grace; and 
then the very Presence of God beside Moses at that 
moment. Moses was at the head of Israel. Moses 
had everything to think of, and everything to do for 
Israel. Israel was a child, and a wilful and a dis¬ 
obedient child : and it all lay heavy upon Moses. 
Moses had been put at the head of Israel by the 
election and call of God. He had just led Israel out 
of Egypt. The whole people lay beneath him at 
that moment, spread out in their tents in the waste 
wilderness. And Moses had climbed that mountain 
that morning with a very heavy heart. It was but 
yesterday that Moses had been so cut to the heart 
with the awful fall of Aaron his brother—his awful 
sin in the matter of the golden calf : and altogether 
Moses was as near giving over and lying down 
to die, as ever a despairing man was. It was all 
that extremity and accumulation of cares and 
labours and disappointments and despairs: and 
then, at that moment, this so new, so unexpected, 
and so magnificent manifestation of the presence, 
and the grace, and the covenant-faithfulness of 
God ; it was all that coming upon Moses at such a 
moment, and in such a manner,—the stupendous 
scene: the cleft rock: the Divine Hand: the 
Divine Voice : the Divine Name : and Moses alone 
with God amid it all,—it was all this that made 
Moses make haste, and bow his head toward the 


MOSES—MAKING HASTE 


55 


earth, and worship, and say, “ Pardon our iniquity 
and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.” 

Archdeacon Paley discovered for us this feature 
of Paul’s mind and heart. Ever since Paley’s day 
it has been a proverb about Paul that he so often in 
his Epistles “ goes off on a word.” Now what 
word was it, I like to wonder, that made Moses “ go 
off ” with such haste from listening to praying ? 
All the words of the Lord moved Moses that day : 
but some of those so new and so great words from 
heaven that day would move Moses and hasten 
him off,—some of them, no doubt, more than others. 
Was i t I AM THAT 1 AM: and then, 1 will 
cover thee with My hand while I pass by ? Would 
Moses need more ? What angel in heaven, what 
saint on the earth would need more ? Or was it 
I AM in His mercy ? or was it the same in His 
grace ? or again in His long-suffering ? Whatever 
it was, it had scarcely gone out of the mouth of God 
when Moses had it in his mouth. Such haste did 
Moses make, and so suddenly did his whole heart 
go off and break out into prayer. The clear-eyed 
author of the Horae Paulinae throws a flood of light 
on the Apostle’s mind and heart by pointing out 
to us the New Testament words and New Testa¬ 
ment things that made Paul so suddenly break off 
into prayer and praise, into apostrophe and into 
doxology. And it is delightful to watch and see 
who “go off ” into prayer and into praise : who at 


56 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


one word of God, and who at another : who “ make 
haste,” and because of what. We see some who get 
no further than the very first word of the text. 
Notably the 136th Psalm : " His mercy endureth 
for ever.” “ His mercy endureth for ever.” The 
Psalmist’s heart so hastens him in this matter that 
he can only write a line at a time—when his hot 
pen breaks in again with God’s mercy. Six-and- 
twenty times in one psalm does that Psalmist after 
Moses’ own heart “ make haste ” to hymn the 
“ mercy of God.” The publican also in the Temple 
“ went off ” on this attribute, till he was sent down 
to his own house justified. “ I obtained mercy,” 
said the Apostle, “ that in me first Jesus Christ 
might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern.” 
“ The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious.” 

And Gracious! Not to speak of the countless 
prayers, and psalms, and sermons that have taken 
their stand on the Grace of God, we have a whole 
masterpiece in our own tongue in celebration of 
that Grace of God, and of that Grace alone. All 
who have tasted what Grace is, either in religion or 
in letters, must know and love that classical piece 
which has Grace Abounding for its title-page. 
“ O ! to Grace how great a debtor ! ” in that way 
another in our own tongue “goes off” on the same 
blessed word. “ Long-suffering, forgiving iniquity, 
trangression, and sin.” How many have hasted and 
bowed down at all these saving names of God ! 


MOSES—MAKING HASTE 


57 


And, how many fathers of children have “ made 
haste ” as they read that God sometimes “ visits 
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children”! 
Now, as we know Paul so much better, when we 
know the words and the things that arrested him, 
took him captive, and started him off into prayer 
and praise,—so would we know and love and honour 
one another if we could be told at what name and 
at what attribute of God our neighbour makes 
haste to pray. They had a bold, childlike way in 
Israel with the names of God, and with their own 
names. At a child’s birth they would take a Divine 
Name—El, or Jah, and they would add that name 
on to the former family name, and then give that 
compounded, fortified, ennobled and sanctified 
name to their child ; till that child, all his days, 
could never sign his name, or hear his name spoken, 
without his father’s God coming up before him. 
Now, which of God’s names are so worked up and 
so woven into your home and into your heart ? 
Is it mercy ? Is it grace ? Is it long-suffering ? 
Or does God see you, as your son is born and so 
soon grows up, hastening lest it be said of you, 
" The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the 
children’s teeth are set on edge ” ? What is it that 
makes you make haste like Moses ? If we knew, 
we should, in that, read your heart down to the 
very bottom. If we knew, we should know how 
to pray both for you and for yours as we ought. 


58 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


But, once a man has begun to employ the promises 
of God in Holy Scripture in that way, Holy Scripture, 
and all its promises, will not suffice that man for his 
life of prayer. He will go on to make every book 
he reads a Scripture : and he will not long read 
any book that cannot be so made and so employed. 
Every book will become to him a word of God, 
and every place a mount of God ; and every new 
experience in his life, and every new circumstance 
in his life, a new occasion, and a new call to make 
haste to prayer. He will go about this world 
watching for occasions, and for calls, to prayer : 
he will be found ready and willing for all those 
occasions and calls when they come : and when 
they do not come fast enough, he will not wait for 
them any longer, but will himself make them. 
Every new beginner in prayer, for one thing, looks 
upon every approaching time and place of tempta¬ 
tion as a summons to “ make haste.” And not 
neophytes and new beginners only; but the oldest 
saints, and the wariest saints and the least liable 
to temptation, will not think themselves safe without 
constant and instant prayer. Look at Christ. 
Consider the Captain of our Salvation Himself. 
Just look at the Intercessor Himself. By the time 
He came to His last trials and temptations—we 
should have thought that by that time He would 
have been above all temptation. We should have 
thought that by that time He would have fallen 


MOSES—MAKING HASTE 


59 


back upon His Divine Nature: or, if not that, then 
upon His perfect sanctification. But, what did He 
do ? See what He did ! He cut short His great 
sermon, after the Supper, in order that He might 
get away from the upper room to the Garden to 
pray. He made haste to get across the Kedron 
to the place where He was wont to go alone at 
night. He said, “Arise and make haste; let us go 
hence.” And as soon as He was come to His closet, 
among the vines and the aloes, He made haste to 
shut His door till the blood came through His fore¬ 
head, and fell down on the midnight grass. He 
was in an agony, just as if He had been a new 
beginner closing, for the first time, with the world 
that lieth in the wicked one, and with the wicked 
one himself. He foresaw the trials and the tempta¬ 
tions of that night and that morning, and that 
made him hasten away, even from the Lord’s 
Table, to secret prayer. 

But not only when the Bible, with all its promises, 
is in their hands; and not only when trials and 
temptations are at their doors, will your men of 
prayer “ make haste.” Not only so : but if you 
know how to watch their ways you will find some¬ 
thing that is nothing short of positive genius in 
their inventiveness, and in their manipulation of 
these times and these places to make them times 
and places of prayer. The very striking of the 
clock—even in such a monotonous, meaningless 


60 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


familiar and commonplace thing as that, you will 
find some men every time the clock strikes, making 
haste again to pray. In curiosity, at this point, 
I rose from my desk and looked up two first-class 
dictionaries, and was disappointed not to find this 
sacred sense of the word, Horology , in either of them. 
But that did not matter. I know elsewhere the 
noblest sense of that neglected and incompleted 
word, independently of the dictionaries. And all 
the members of the classes 1 also know by this time 
the heavenly sense of Horology, though these 
dictionary-makers are ignorant of it. Yes, there 
have been men, and we know their names and have 
their “ Horologies ” in our hands—men of God, 
who have so “ watched ” unto prayer and have 
so numbered, not their days only, but their hours 
also—that their clock never struck without their 
making haste to speak again to Him, Who, in an 
hour when we think not, will say that time, with 
all its years and days and hours shall be no longer. 
They parted company with every past hour, and 
saw it going away to judgment with prayer : and 
they received and sanctified every new hour, con¬ 
secrating its first moments to praise and prayer. 

Then, again, the attractions of life, youth, man¬ 
hood, middle life, declining life, old age: wise and 
prudent and foreseeing men take all these admoni- 

1 A reference to the St. George’s Classes, which at that time 
(1895) were studying the Mystics under Dr. Whyte’s leadership. 


MOSES—MAKING HASTE 


61 


tions to heart and “ make haste.” Severe sickness 
and approaching death make all men to be up 
and doing. Donne, whom James the First per¬ 
suaded to become a minister,—and to James, with 
all his faults, we are deep in debt for that,—has left 
behind him a very remarkable book, “ Devotions 
upon Emergent Occasions, and at the Several Steps 
in my Sickness, Digested into Meditations upon our 
Human Condition : into Expostulations and Debate- 
ments with God: and into Prayers to Him, upon 
the Several Occasions.” Donne’s all but fatal 
illness came, according to his Book of Devotions, 
through twenty-three stages: and at each new 
stage the sick scholar, saint and superb preacher 
made haste with another threefold Devotion. The 
first, at the first Grudging, as the old doctors called 
it, of his sickness: the third, when the patient 
takes his bed: the fourth, when the physician is 
sent for : the sixth, when the physician is afraid : 
the eighth, when the king sends his own physician : 
the fifteenth, when “ I sleep not day nor night ” : 
the sixteenth, when I hear the bells ringing for 
another man’s funeral: the nineteenth, when the 
physicians say that they see the shore : the twenty- 
third, when they warn me of the fearful danger of 
relapsing. “ Most excellent Prince ”—said Donne, 
in dedicating his Devotions to James’ eldest son— 
“ Most Excellent Prince, I have had three births— 
one, natural, when I came into the world : one, 


62 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


supernatural, when I entered into the ministry : 
and now, a preternatural birth, in returning to life 
after this sickness/' And this is the best record, 
and the best result to Donne, and to us of all his 
births, and of all his health, and of all his disease : 
this, that he was a man who “ made haste " to 
take all that befell him to God in prayer. “ Devo¬ 
tions/’ he calls his work, “ upon Emergent Occasions: 
the Several Steps of my Sickness." 

Others, again, will strike out ways of prayer and 
a course of prayer in this way. One will take seven 
friends, and, without telling them, he will make 
himself certain to pray for them, by giving up a part 
of each day of the week to each one of his seven 
friends. And another will have seven children, 
and he will distribute them over the week for special 
and importunate prayer. Another will take certain 
hours and certain days to work before God certain 
vices out of his own heart, and life, and character, 
and to work in, before God, certain virtues. Another 
will have certain seasons, and at those seasons 
certain devotions, to keep in mind some great catas¬ 
trophe, or some great deliverance, or some great 
and fearful answer to prayer, and so on. " Some 
great calamity happens to you," says one of those 
original men; "you do very well to make it an 
occasion of exercising a greater devotion." 

But, excellent and approved and seen to be very 
profitable as all that is, yet it is ejaculatory prayer 


MOSES—MAKING HASTE 


63 


that is the perfection and the finish of all these 
kinds of prayer in which we “ make haste.” And 
when ejaculatory prayer has once taken possession 
of any man’s heart and habits, that man is not very 
far off from his Father’s house. For 

Each moment by ejaculated prayer, 

He takes possession of his mansion there. 

Jaculum , all boys know, means “ a dart.” Ejacu¬ 
latory prayer ! A prayer shot up like a spear out 
of a soldier’s hand : shot up like an arrow sped off 
an archer’s sudden string! You have seen charts 
of the air and of the ocean, with a multitude of 
rapid and intricate fines to mark the origin and the 
direction and the termination of the air and the 
ocean currents. You have seen and have admired 
beautiful charts and maps laid down like that. 
Well, if you could, in this fife, but be let see into the 
Charthouse of Heaven, you would see still more 
wonderful and still more beautiful things there. 
You would see there, kept secret against the last 
day, whole chambers full of nothing else, but of 
charts and maps of ejaculatory prayer. You would 
see prayer-plans of the cities and of the scattered 
villages where God’s best remembrancers are now 
living,—plans and projections laid down and filled 
up by those ministering spirits who are sent forth 
to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation. 
You would see, filling the heavens above those cities 
and villages, showers of ejaculatory prayer going 


64 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


up and showers of immediate answers coming down. 
You would see shafts and darts and shootings up¬ 
wards of sudden and short prayers wherever those 
men went in life, wherever they walked, wherever 
they worked, and wherever they went to rest and 
recreate themselves. From the street when those 
men pass along the street : from their tables where 
they eat their meals: from their beds: all day, 
and all night. You could follow and make out 
from these charts of ejaculation their times and 
their places of temptation. You would see a perfect 
sheaf of upward arrows, with all their points sharp¬ 
ened with love, as those men passed your house or 
met you in the street. Where you shot your arrows 
—not of prayer —at them , to your confusion you will 
see that they shot their arrows—not of envy or ill- 
will —up to God. What you see not now, you shall 
see hereafter. And that because, like all else in 
earth and in heaven, the chartularies of heaven 
and of earth will all be laid open at the last day : 
and then, when Christ shall appear, all who, 
with Moses, have “ made haste ” to pray shall 
appear with Christ in glory. And on that day, and 
at that hour, all those hidden schemes and methods 
and devices of secret and ejaculatory prayer shall 
be the astonishment of the whole world, and the 
admiration, and the praise, and the justification of 
God, and of all godly men, at that day. 

" Seek ye the Lord,” then, “ while He may be 


MOSES—MAKING HASTE 


65 


found, call ye upon Him while He is near.” At 
every Name of His, call. Every time the clock 
strikes, call, ejaculate and call. For He saith, " I 
have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day 
of salvation have I succoured thee : behold, now is 
the accepted time ; behold, now is the day of salva¬ 
tion.” “ To-day; lest any of you be hardened 
through the deceitfulness of sin ” 


t 


5 


VI 


ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. r. 

“ Elias . . . prayed in his prayer.”— Jas. v. 17 (Marg.). 

Elijah towers up like a mountain above all the 
other prophets. There is a solitary grandeur about 
Elijah that is all his own. There is an unearthli¬ 
ness and a mysteriousness about Elijah that is all 
his own. There is a volcanic suddenness—a volcanic 
violence indeed—about almost all Ehj ah's move¬ 
ments, and about almost all Eh j ah’s appearances. 
“ And Ehjah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabi¬ 
tants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God 
of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall 
not be dew nor rain these years, but according to 
my word. . . . And the King of Samaria said unto 
them, What manner of man was he which came 
up to meet you, and told you these words ? And 
they answered him, He was an hairy man, and 
girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And 
the King said, It is Ehjah the Tishbite.” 

And, then, this is the very last word of the very 

last prophet of the Old Testament. “ Behold, 

sauth the Lord, I will send you Ehjah the prophet, 

66 


ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER 67 


before the coming of the great and dreadful day 
of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the 
fathers to the children, and the heart of the children 
to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with 
a curse.” And, then, in the opening of the New 
Testament, we hear our Lord speaking with great 
pride of the great austerity, the great solitariness, 
the great strength, and the great courage of Elijah. 
“ What went ye out into the wilderness to see ? 
A reed shaken with the wind ? But what went ye 
out for to see ? A man clothed in soft raiment ? 
Behold, they that wear soft raiment are in kings* 
houses. But what went ye out for to see ? A 
prophet ? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a 
prophet. . . . And, if ye will receive it, this is 
Elias, which was for to come ! ** 

Elijah had a heavenly name : but he had, to 
begin with, an earthly nature. He was a man, to 
begin with, " subject to like passions as we are.” 
Elijah was a man indeed of passions “ all compact.** 
We never see Elijah but he is in a passion, as we 
say. In a passion of anger at Ahab. In a passion 
of scorn and contempt at the priests of Baal. In 
a passion of fury and extermination against all 
idolatry, and against all organised uncleanness. 
In a passion of prayer and intercession. And, once 
—for, after all, Elijah is flesh and blood, and not 
stone and iron—once in a passion of despondency 
and melancholy under the juniper tree. Elijah was 


68 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


a great man. There was a great mass of manhood 
in Elijah. He was a mountain of a man, with 
a whirlwind for a heart. Elijah did nothing by 
halves. What he did, he did with all his heart. 
And what a heart it was ! He, among us, who has 
the most heart : he, among us, who has the most 
manhood : he, among us, who has the most passion 
in his heart—the most love and the most hate ; the 
most anger and the most meekness; the most 
scorn, and the most contempt, and the most 
humility, and the most honour ; the most fear, and 
the most faith ; the most melancholy, and the most 
sunny spirit; the most agony of prayer, both in 
his body and in his soul, and the most victorious 
assurance that his prayer is already answered before 
it is yet offered—that man is the likest of us all 
to Elijah, and that man has Elijah’s mantle fallen 
upon him. 

James, the brother of the Lord, and the author 
of this Epistle, was nicknamed “ Camel-knees ” by 
the early Church. James had been so slow of heart 
to believe that his brother, Jesus, could possibly be 
the Christ, that, after he was brought to believe, 
he was never off his knees. And when they came 
to coffin him, it was like coffining the knees of a 
camel rather than the knees of a man, so hard, so 
worn, so stiff were they with prayer, and so unlike 
any other dead man’s knees they had ever coffined. 
The translators tell us that they have preserved 


ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER 69 


James’s intense Hebrew idiom for us in the margin : 
and I, for one, am much obliged to them for doing 
that. For, if I am saved at last, if I ever learn to 
pray, if I ever come to put my passions into my 
prayers,—I shall have to say to “ Camel-knees,” 
and to his excellent editors and translators, that I 
am to all eternity in their debt. The apostolic and 
prophetic idiom in the margin takes hold of my 
imagination. It touches my heart. It - speaks to 
my conscience. And it must do all that to you 
also. For, even after we have, in a way, prayed, 
off and on, for many years, in the pulpit, at the 
family altar, and on the platform in the prayer¬ 
meeting,—how seldom, if ever, we “ pray in our 
prayers ” ! We repeat choice passages of Scripture. 
We recite, with sonorous voices, most excellent 
evangelical extracts from Isaiah and Ezekiel. We 
declaim our petitions in a way that would do credit 
to a stage surrounded with spectators. We praise 
one man, and we blame another man, in our prayers. 
We have an eye, now to this man present, and now 
to that man absent. We pronounce appreciations, 
and we pass judgments in our prayers. We flatter 
the great, and we fall down before Kings. \^e tell 
our people what the Queen said to us, and what 
we said to her. We argue, and we debate, and we 
reason together, sometimes with men, and some¬ 
times with God. “ Come, now, and let us reason 
together, saith the Lord.” Are you old enough to 


70 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


remember Dr. Candlish’s forenoon prayer ? We 
used to say that his first prayer was enough for the 
whole of that day. He so “ prayed in that prayer.” 
He so came and reasoned together with God in 
that prayer. Sometimes he would take us to our 
knees till we had knees in those days like James the 
Just, as he led us through the whole of Paul’s 
reasoning with God and with man in the Epistle to 
the Romans. Sometimes he would argue like Job, 
and would not be put down ; and then he would 
weep like Jeremiah and dance and sing like Isaiah. 
That great preacher was an Elijah both in his 
passions and in his prayers. He would put all his 
passions at one time into an Assembly speech as he 
stood before Ahab, and at another time into a great 
sermon to his incomparably privileged people : but 
I liked his passions best in his half-hour prayer 
on a Sabbath morning ; he so “ prayed in that 
prayer.” 

You have not Ehj ah’s prophetical office, not 
James’s apostolical inspiration, not Dr. Candlish’s 
oratorical power : but you have plenty of passion 
if you would but make the right use of it. You are 
all vicious or virtuous men, prayerful or prayerless 
men ; and, then, you are effectual or unavailing 
men in your prayers—just as your passions are. 
You have all quite sufficient variety and amount of 
passion to make you mighty men with God and with 
men, if only your passions found their proper vent 


ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER 71 


in your prayers. You have all passion enough— 
far too much—in other things. What an ocean of 
all kinds of passion your heart is ! What depths 
of self-love are in your heart! And what a master- 
passion is your self-love ! Like Aaron’s serpent, 
your passion of self-love swallows all the rest of the 
serpents, of which your heart is full. What hate, 
again, you have in your heart, at the persons and 
the things you do so hate ! What hope also for the 
things you so passionately hope for ! Oh, if only 
you had that passionate hope in your heart, which 
maketh not ashamed! “Yea, what clearing of 
yourselves ” there is in your hearts ! “Yea, what 
indignation ! Yea, what fear! Yea, what vehe¬ 
ment desire! Yea, what zeal! Yea, what re¬ 
venge ! ” Yes : you have passions enough to make 
you a saint in heaven, or a devil in hell: and 
they are every day making you either the one 
or the other. We have all plenty of passion, and 
to spare : only, it is all missing the mark. It is all 
sound and fury, a tale told, a life laid out and lived, 
by an idiot. Our passions, all given us for our 
blessedness, are all making us and other people 
miserable. Our passions, and their proper objects, 
were all committed to us of God to satisfy, and to 
delight, and to regale, and to glorify us. But we 
have taken our passions and have made them the 
instruments and the occasions of our self-de¬ 
struction. We are self-blinded, and self-besotted 


72 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


men : and it is the prostitution of our passions that 
has done it. Does the thought of God ever make 
your heart swell and beat with holy passion ? 
Does the Name of Jesus Christ ever make you sing 
in the night ? Do His words hide in your heart 
like the words of your bridegroom ? Do you 
tremble to offend Him ? Do you number the days 
till you are to be for ever with Him ? And so on— 
through all your passions of all kinds in your heart ? 
No, oh no ! Your daily life among these men and 
women is full of passion : but your heart in your 
religion is as dead as a stone. And you are not 
alone to blame for that. Your father and your 
mother, your tutor and your governor, taught 
you many branches of learning and perfected you 
in many accomplishments, as they are called : but 
they could not teach you to keep this passion in 
your heart, for they did not know the way. You 
never heard them say so much as the word 
“ passion ” in connection with prayer. And your 
ministers have not mended matters. They did not 
study the passions at college : at least, never in 
this light. They graduated in mental philosophy ; 
but it was falsely so called. Their first-class honours 
puffed them up : but they edified them not. And 
ever since, their own passions are all in disorder and 
death, and how then could they correct or instruct 
you ? Their own passions are not aflame within 
them with God, and with their Saviour Jesus 


ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER 78 


Christ, and with His Cross, and with His throne of 
judgment, and with heaven, and with hell. 

The Bible, naturally, shows a preference for men 
of “ like passions ” with itself. The more passionate¬ 
ness any man puts into his prayer, the more space 
and the more praise the Bible gives to that man. 
Jacob will come at once to every mind. Now, why 
does Jacob come to all our minds at this moment ? 
Simply because he was a prince in the passionate¬ 
ness of his great prayer at the Jabbok. What a 
tempest of passion broke upon the throne of God 
all that night! What a storm of fear and of despair, 
and of remorse, and of self-accusation, and of 
recollection, and of imagination, and of all that was 
within Jacob ! Jacob’s passions literally tore him 
to pieces that terrible night. His thigh-bones were 
twisted, and torn out of their sockets : his strongest 
sinews snapped under the strain like so many silk 
threads. There was not another night like that 
for passion in prayer for two thousand years. Esau 
also often “ halted upon his thigh ” : but that was 
with hunting too hard; that was with running 
down venison, and leaping hedges and ditches after 
his quarry. Esau wrestled with wild beasts. But 
Jacob,—he wrestled with the angel. And take 
Hannah as an example to wives and mothers. 
What a passionate, heart-broken, half-insane woman 
was Hannah! For, how she “ prayed in her 
prayers ” ! She was absolutely drunk with her 


74 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


sorrowful passion. She would have fallen on the 
floor of the sanctuary as she reeled in her passion, 
had she not caught hold of the horns of the altar. 
And Isaiah,—“ Oh, that Thou wouldest rend the 
heavens,”—and he rent them as he prayed: “ that 
Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains 
might flow down at Thy presence. . . . But we are 
all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses 
are as filthy rags ; and we all do fade as a leaf; 
and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us 
away ”—and a thousand such passionate passages, 
both in preaching and in prayer. What a passion 
for holiness had that great Old Testament orator ! 
And Ezra, who is too little known. “ At the 
evening sacrifice I arose up from my heaviness; 
and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell 
upon my knees, and spread out my hands unto the 
Lord my God, and said, O my God, I am ashamed 
and blush to lift up my face to Thee, my God : 
for our iniquities are increased over our head, and 
our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. . . . 
Now when Ezra had prayed, and when he had con¬ 
fessed, weeping and casting himself down before the 
house of God, there assembled unto him out of 
Israel a very great congregation of men and women 
and children: for the people wept very sore.” 
There also is passion in prayer for you ; and men, 
and women, and children, all joining in it! 

But time would fail me to tell all the passionate 


ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER 75 


prayers of the prophets, and the Psalmist, and the 
friend at midnight, and the importunate widow, 
and all ending in the Garden of Gethsemane. No : 
not all ending there—alas, alas ! would God that 
they did,—for our Lord passionately foretells certain 
passionate scenes that we shall all see, if we do not 
take a passionate part in them. “ For, when once 
the Master of the house is risen up, and hath shut 
to the door, and ye begin to stand without . . 
saying Lord, Lord, open unto us ! there shall be 
weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see 
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, 
in the Kingdom of God, and you yourselves cast 
out.” There is passion in that prayer, and in this : 
“ Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that 
sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the 
Lamb ! ” 

And, now to sum it all up, and to lay it all to 
heart. Let every man here, henceforth “ pray in 
his prayers ” like Elijah and like James. That is 
to say, let every man put his passion into his 
prayers. And, then, what will take place in every 
man and in every man’s house who lays up in his 
heart, and practises in his life, the lesson of this 
great Scripture ? This will take place in every 
such man, and in every such man’s household. 
His heart will, by degrees, be drawn off the things 
of this deceitful and sinful world: and it will be 
directed in upon the great world within him, the 


76 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


great world before him, and the great world above 
him. The heat of his heart will all begin to burn 
after heavenly things. And the man will, gradually, 
as he continues to pray, become a new man, a new 
son, a new lover, a new husband, a new father. His 
passions that made him so impossible to live with 
will all become subdued, and softened, and sweetened, 
till he will be like a little child in your hands. He 
was at one time so hard, and so harsh, and so 
impossible to please, and so full of his own ideas 
and opinions and prejudices and passions, so loud 
and so wilful: but you never hear him now ; he 
thinks you so much better than himself; he so 
despises himself and so respects and honours 
you. Patience and meekness and silence, and his 
daily cross, are now the only passions of his heart. 
Perhaps all that is taking place and going on in 
your own house, and you do not see it or aright 
understand it. James did not see nor understand 
Jesus till Jesus was glorified. But it has been 
prayer that has been doing it. Nothing does all 
that in any house but prayer. Nothing silences, 
and subdues, and sanctifies our passions but prayer. 
His Prayer when you were asleep ! His Prayer 
with passion, that had to wait for its full utterance 
and for its full agony till you were fast asleep ! 
His Prayer also when you were neglecting Him, 
and trampling upon Him ! 

Oh, I think you should cheer on and encourage 


ELIJAH—PASSIONATE IN PRAYER 77 


your minister to preach more about prayer ! And 
about the place of the passions in prayer ! You 
should buy the best books about prayer! You 
know their names, surely. You should send presents 
of the best books about prayer ! It would soon 
repay you ! It would soon be returned—into no 
bosom so soon as into yours !—if you had even one 
in your whole household who “ prayed in his 
prayers.” 


VII 


JOB—GROPING 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ Oh that I knew where I might find Him ! that I might 
come even to His seat.”— Job xxiii. 3. 

The Book of Job is a most marvellous composition. 
Who composed it, when it was composed, or where 
—nobody knows. Dante has told us that the com¬ 
position of the Divine Comedy had made him lean 
for many a year. And the author of the Book of 
Job must have been Dante’s fellow both in labour 
and in sorrow and in sin, and in all else that always 
goes to the conception, and the composition, and 
the comprehension of such immortal works as the 
Book of Job and the Divina Commedia. 

The worst of it was that Job could not find out, 
with all he could do, why it was that God had so 
forsaken him. Job had a good and honest heart, 
and a conscience void of offence both toward God 
and toward man. With the whole of the Book of 
Job in our hands, we know what neither Job, nor 
Eliphaz, nor Bildad, nor Zophar, nor Elihu knew. 
We have the key of the whole mystery, and the 
clue of the whole labyrinth, in our hands all the 

78 


JOB—GROPING 


79 


time we read. We see the end from the beginning. 
We see that Job, in all his terrible trials, was being 
made a spectacle unto the world, and unto angels, 
and unto men : a splendid spectacle as it turned 
out, of patience, and endurance, and humility, and 
resignation, and faith, and love. But what Job 
knew not then he knows now, as he stands on the 
sea of glass, having a harp of God in his hand. 
“ And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of 
God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and 
marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty ; 
just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints.” 

The captivity of Job arose out of God’s pure and 
unchallengeable sovereignty, as we say. God 
deserted and forsook Job for reasons that were 
sufficient to Himself, and in which He had no 
counsellor. It was to silence the scoffs and sneers 
of Satan : it was to produce a shining example of 
submission and resignation, and trust in God, that 
would stand out to the end of time : and it was to 
perfect all these, and many other graces, in the 
great patriarch himself that Job was so forsaken 
of God, and had his faith and his trust in God put 
to such a terrible test. That was Job’s case. But 
if we are in any such darkness to-day, the likelihood 
is that our case is not such a mystery: our case is 
not so deep and unfathomable to us as Job’s case 
was to him. To take a too common case. One 
here will have lost God, just by “ neglecting ” Him. 


80 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


In his inward relations with the soul, God, so to 
speak, does not thrust Himself upon the soul. He— 
so we must speak of such things—He sometimes 
stands aside, and apart, while persons and things 
take that possession of the soul which rightly belongs 
to Him. And, then, after a time, the silly soul 
comes to itself, and wakens up to see and to feel its 
bitter loss. “ I have neglected Thee,” cries out 
one who has taught many of us how to keep up a 
close walk with God. “ God,” says John Donne 
also, in a great sermon on the same subject, “ God 
is like us in this also, that He takes it worse to be 
slighted, to be neglected, to be left out, than to be 
actually injured. Our inconsideration, our not 
thinking of God in our actions, offends Him more 
than our sins.” “ Pardon,” cries Bishop Wilson, 
in his Sacra Privata, ** pardon, that I have passed 
so many days without acknowledging and confess¬ 
ing Thy wonderful goodness to the most unworthy 
of Thy servants. Preserve in my soul, 0 God, such 
a constant and clear sense of my obligations to Thee, 
that upon every new receipt of Thy favour I may 
immediately turn my eyes to Him from whom 
cometh my salvation.” Another in his evening 
prayer in his family says this : “ We have fled 
from Thee seeking us : we have neglected Thee 
loving us : we have stopped our ears to Thee speak¬ 
ing to us : we have forgotten Thee doing good to us : 
we have despised Thee correcting us.” Thus con- 


JOB—GROPING 


81 


fess before God Andrewes and Donne and Wilson. 
Only,—these are quite exceptional men. And their 
God has a sensitiveness, and a sensibility, so to call 
it, toward such men,—a sensitiveness and a tender¬ 
ness that He cannot have toward the common run 
of His people. God comes far nearer to some men 
than to others : and, then, on their neglect of Him, 
He goes much farther away from them, and stays 
away much longer. God’s dealings with the com¬ 
monalty of His people are much more common¬ 
place, conventional, and uneventful than they are 
with His electest and choicest saints. His relations 
with them are exquisitely intimate, tender, easily 
offended, and easily injured. But an example, and 
an illustration from real life, and that too, among 
ourselves, will be far more to the purpose than the 
name of any great saint of other days, and far 
more worth than any amount of generalisation and 
description. Conversing the other day with one 
of my own people, about the life of God in the soul, 
he took me aside, and told me this. I have his 
permission to tell it to anyone to whom it may be a 
blessing to hear it. It was last summer, when our 
congregation was scattered about, up and down the 
country, and when some of the home restraints were 
sitting somewhat loose on some of our people. The 
first three weeks of his holiday—he gave me the 
exact names and dates—he never had such a close 

walk with God during all the thirty years off and 
6 


82 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


on—that he has known God. But he had an invi¬ 
tation to spend ten days with one of ourselves : and 
he set out, so he told me, to keep his engagement, 
with some misgivings of heart that the visit would 
be too much for him. But, as it happened, it turned 
out far worse for him than anything he had antici¬ 
pated. Such was the company of which the house 
was full; such were the conversations that were 
permitted, and encouraged ; such were the books 
that were read, and that were never read ; such 
was the eating and the drinking; and such was the 
keeping of the Sabbath, that, what with one thing 
and what with another, he told me that he had read 
little else but the penitential Psalms and the Book 
of Job ever since, so exactly does that Book describe 
his desolate estate to-day. Now, whether it was 
his too great complaisancy with the secular-minded 
company ; or, whether it was the part he took, or 
did not take in the conversations; or whether it 
was the talk about their absent friends, and the 
fault-finding, and the detraction, of which that 
house is notoriously full; or whether it was that he 
had come away and left at home his books and 
papers, his habits in secret that so help him to keep 
up his communion with God ; or whether it was his 
miskeeping of the two Sabbaths that he was there,— 
he did not particularise to tell me : and his soul 
was too much in hell already for me to ask. Only, 
he came and he went; and no one in that crowded 


JOB—GROPING 


83 


house knew any more what was passing in that man’s 
soul, than Job's four friends knew the secret of the 
Lord with His chastened servant. In ways like 
these—in ways that nobody would believe—men 
among ourselves also are crying to God night and 
day in agony : " Oh that I knew where I might find 
Him ! That I might come even to His seat ! ” 
Now, when we set out to seek for anything that 
we have lost, we do not go gaping about anywhere 
and everywhere. We go straight to the place where 
we lost it. We retrace our steps to the exact spot 
where we wakened up to miss the thing we now 
value and miss so much. Go back, then, to that sad 
house where God, in His anger at you, forsook you. 
On what day ? at what hour ? On what occasion 
was it ? Was it when you were sitting at table, and 
forgetting yourself ? Was it during that ever-to-be- 
lamented and never-to-be-recalled conversation ? 
Was it at that moment when the golden rule leapt 
too late into your mind ? You would not have 
believed it beforehand that Almighty God would 
have descended to take notice of such trifles. That 
He would have taken a passing indiscretion in eat¬ 
ing, and drinking, and conversation, so much to 
heart! and would have kept it up so long against 
you,—you would not have believed it, if you had 
not yourself experienced it. No ! But He has 
taken you this time out of all men’s hands into His 
own hands. And, on your own admission, He is 


84 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


teaching you a lesson, this time, that you will not 
soon forget. He will teach you that there is nothing 
He takes so mighty ill at your hand as just the way 
you transgress against your brother, and let other 
men transgress against him, when you are his only 
friend. A new commandment,—He has said to you 
at a hundred communion tables,—that you do to 
others as you would they did to you. But God 
does not cast off for ever : all God’s people will 
testify and tell you. No. But you will have to 
seek Him with many bitter complaints against 
yourself this time, and with very determined inten¬ 
tions and resolutions for the time to come. 

Would you know, then, where you may have any 
hope to find Him ? Would you come this day to 
His seat ? Would you have it again, between Him 
and you, as it was in months past, and as it was in 
the days when God preserved you ? Well,—come 
this way. Try this door. I do not say that you 
will find Him at your first approach and prayer. 
You may, or you may not. God is not mocked 
God is not to be set aside, and His holy law, just 
when it suits you and your company. But that 
being admitted, try this. Deny yourself. “ Mortify 
your members, which are on the earth.” Take up 
your cross daily in that thing concerning which God 
has had a controversy with you in your conscience 
secretly ever since. Was it in eating or drinking ? 
Was it in bad temper ? Was it in envy and ill-will ? 


JOB—GROPING 


85 


Was it in that sweet conversation in which you sat 
and spoke such unanimous things to the deprecia¬ 
tion and damage of your brother ? If it was, try 
this. I have known this work well. I have known 
it work an immediate miracle. Go straight to your 
brother to-day : or take pen and ink, and tell him 
that you have not had a dog’s life with God ever 
since. “ When I kept silence, my bones waxed old 
through my roaring all the day long. For day and 
night Thy hand was heavy upon me : my moisture 
is turned into the drought of summer. I acknow¬ 
ledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I 
not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions 
unto the Lord : and Thou forgavest the iniquity 
of my sin.” 

Is it “ even to His seat,” then, that you would 
fain come? Is your cause ready to be “ordered 
before Him ” ? And is your mouth “ filled with 
arguments,” if you could only come to His seat ? 
Well, know you not where His seat really and truly 
is ? What! Know you not that His seat is with¬ 
in you,—even within your heart ? “ When I was 

a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, 
I thought as a child.” It was when Israel was a 
child that God came down, and sat upon a mercy- 
seat of pure gold : two cubits and a half was the 
length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of 
it, with the cherubim stretching forth their wings 
on high. It was when Israel was still a child that 


86 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


he went up, now to this mountain of Samaria and 
now to that mountain of Jerusalem, saying, as he 
went up : “Oh that I knew where I might find 
Him ! That I might come even to His seat! ” 
But, finding fault with those childish days, God has 
now said, “ Know ye not that ye are the temple 
of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you ? 
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost which is in you, and which ye have of 
God ? ” And again,—for ever since the fulness of 
time our New Testament is full of it,—“ Say not in 
thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven ? (that 
is, to bring Christ down from above :) or, Who shall 
descend into the deep ? (that is, to bring up Christ 
again from the dead.) But what saith it ? The 
word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy 
heart.” 

At the same time, it is the last thing we are able 
and willing to do,—to cease to be children, and to 
grow up to be men, in the things of God. To learn 
and know that God is a spirit, and that He dwells 
not in temples made with hands ; but that His 
true and only temple is the temple of the penitent, 
contrite, holy and loving heart,—we are old, and 
near our end before we learn that. My brethren, 
be no longer children in understanding ; but in 
understanding be men. Think, my brethren, 
think. Think your greatest and your best, your 
most magnificent, your most deep, and inward, and 


JOB—GROPING 


87 


spiritual, about God, and about man, made in the 
image of God. Think, with all your soul, and heart, 
and strength, and mind about the Divine Nature. 
Say of the Divine Nature,—“ Essence beyond 
essence, essence within essence, essence every¬ 
where, and wholly everywhere.” Think and say,— 
Maker, Nourisher, Guardian, Governor, Benefactor, 
and Perfecter of all men and all things. God and 
Father : King and Lord : Fountain of Life and 
Immortality. Blessed be the glory of the Lord out 
of His place. Glory be to Him for His Godhead, 
His mysteriousness, His height, His depth, His 
sovereignty, His almightiness, His eternity, His 
omnipresence, and His grace! Yes, His omni¬ 
presence, everywhere present, and wholly present 
everywhere ; but, most of all, and best of all, in 
the heart of man. It is in the heart of man that 
God establishes His temple. His high throne is 
prepared and set up in the heart of man. His holy 
altars are builded and kindled in the heart of man. 
The sacrifices that alone please God are offered 
continually in the heart of man. There, the Holy 
Ghost ministers in prayer and praise without 
ceasing, making intercession within us with groan- 
ings that cannot be uttered. There also is the 
golden mercy-seat with the two cherubim above it. 
And there the Great High Priest speaketh peace, 
and pronounceth His great Benediction, because 
He continueth there for ever. Seek thy God, then, 


88 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


in thyself! Oh, ye sons and daughters of captive 
Job, seek Him whom ye have lost, and seek Him in 
your own hearts. Come, O prodigal son, come to 
thyself. Enter into thyself. Enter deep enough 
into thyself, and thou shalt come unto His seat. 
For He still sits there, waiting to be gracious there to 
thee. Oh, what glory! Oh, what grace ! Oh, what 
a God ! Oh, what a heart! To have thy God in 
thine own heart, and to have Him wholly there. 
Wholly, and not in part; and wholly there for 
thee. His whole almightiness, His whole grace and 
truth, His whole redemption, His whole salvation ! 
Arise, then, and enter into God’s holy temple. 
Order your cause before Him there, and fill your 
mouth with your best arguments there. Till you 
fall down before Him in your own heart, and say, 
“ I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: 
but now mine eye seeth Thee ! ” 

Are you, then,—by the long-suffering and the 
grace of God,—are you one of those who are this 
day saying, “ Even to-day is my complaint bitter : 
my stroke is heavier than my groaning. Oh that 
I knew where I might find Him : that I might 
come even to His seat! ” Then seek Him where 
Job sought Him and at last found Him. Seek Him 
in a humble, broken, believing heart. Go on seek¬ 
ing Him in a still more, and a still more, humble, 
broken, believing heart. Seek Him deep enough, 
and long enough: seek Him with your whole 


JOB—GROPING 


89 


heart; and sooner, or later, you too will find Him. 
Seek Him like David, seven times a day. Like 
David also, prevent the night watches and the 
dawning of the day seeking Him. If need be, die, 
still seeking Him. And die, saying to Him that, 
even if He should cast you into your bed in hell,— 
warn Him that you will wander about in the outer 
darkness for ever seeking Him, and saying : Oh 
that I knew where I might find Him: that I might 
come even to His seat! Behold, we count them 
happy which endure. 

Ye have heard of the patience of Job. 

“ And the Lord turned the captivity of Job : . . . 
and the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more 
than his beginning. . . So Job died, being old and 
full of days.” 


VIII 


THE PSALMIST—SETTING THE LORD 
ALWAYS BEFORE HIM 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. i. 

“I have set the Lord always before me.”—Ps. xvi. 8. 

If this so devotionally disposed disciple had lived 
in the days of David, and if he had asked of David 
what he here asks of his Master,—that is to say, if 
he had said to David, “ David, thou man after 
God’s own heart, teach me to pray,”—David would 
have answered him in the words of the text. “ Set 
the Lord before you,” David would have said. 
“ Begin every prayer of yours by setting the Lord 
before you.” “ I am a companion of all them that 
fear Thee, and of them that keep Thy precepts,” 
said David. And that made David the most 
accessible and the most affable of men, especially 
in divine things. And, accordingly, if you had 
asked David how he was able to compose such 
wonderful psalms and prayers,—psalms and prayers 
that have lasted to this day, and will last as long 
as the world lasts, and down to the day of judg¬ 
ment,—David would have told you that it was by 

no power or holiness of his that he did it. “ All I 

90 


THE PSALMIST AND HIS LORD 91 


do,” he would have said to you, “ is just to set the 
Lord before me as often as I begin again to sing and 
to pray. I begin; and, ere ever I am aware, 
already my prayer is answered, and my psalm is 
accepted.” “ But surely,” you would have insisted, 
“ it must surely have been by very great power and 
holiness that such psalms and prayers as the 40th 
Psalm, and the 63rd, and the 103rd, and the 119th 
were composed. Such psalms and prayers as these 
could never have been the composition of a man 
subject to like passions as we are.” " I remember 
well,” David would reply, ” I shall never forget 
just how it was with me the day I began one of 
the psalms you have just named. My heart within 
me was as a dry and thirsty land that day. But 
as I set the Lord before me, and as I went on, I 
began to see His power and His glory as I had seen 
Him heretofore in His sanctuary, till my soul was 
satisfied as with marrow and fatness.” If this was 
Peter who said to his Master, “ Lord, teach us to 
pray ! ”—and most likely it was—when Peter’s 
denial of his Master continually came back upon 
him in after days he would often go out to David’s 
sepulchre, which was with them to that day, and 
would say in his agony: “ David ! David ! David 
of the matter of Uriah, and Psalmist of the 51st 
Psalm, teach me to pray ! Teach me thy peni¬ 
tential heart. Teach me, the chief of sinners, how 
thou didst so praise and so pray.” And if David 


92 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

had still been in the earthly Jerusalem he would 
have taught Peter to pray by such confidences and 
confessions as this. “ Come, O thou that fearest 
God/’ David would have said to Peter, “ and I will 
tell thee what He did for my soul! After the 
matter of Uriah, my bones waxed old through my 
roaring all the day long. Till one day I said, I will 
confess my transgressions to the Lord! And I 
took up my carriages and went a far journey into 
the wilderness till I came to the Mount of God. 
And as I ascended the Mount of God, amid lightning 
and thunder and tempest, with my sin ever before 
me, the Lord appeared to me and said, ‘ Behold, 
there is a place by Me, and thou shalt stand upon 
a rock . . . and I will cover thee with my hand 
as I pass by.’ And the Lord passed by, and pro¬ 
claimed, saying, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful 
and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in good¬ 
ness and truth. And I made haste and bowed 
down and said, Forgive mine iniquity, O Lord, and 
take me for Thy servant. And it was so. And I 
sang the 103rd Psalm for the first time, all the way 
home from Horeb to my own house in Jerusalem.” 

And not the 40th and the 63rd and the 103rd 
and the 119th Psalms only : but, if you examine 
with a practised eye any one of the great psalms, 
you will see that what David says in the text is 
true of the composition of them all. Whosoever or 
whatsoever is present or absent from any prayer or 


THE PSALMIST AND HIS LORD 93 


psalm of David, the Lord is always present and is 
never absent. Or if He is ever absent at the begin¬ 
ning of any psalm of David, long before the psalm 
is ended—and before it has gone far—the Lord is 
back again at David’s right hand. We are allowed 
to see deep down into David’s mind and heart in 
the composition of some of his psalms. And notably 
so in the 103rd Psalm. We see David in the opening 
of that superb psalm calling upon his soul and “ all 
that is within him ” to take part in the composition 
of that superb psalm. And eminent among all 
that is within David is that so wonderful power he 
has of setting the Lord before the eyes of his heart. 
And not David, with his great gifts and great 
privileges only. But we ourselves,—when we enter 
our own souls in the same service, we also discover 
in ourselves the same noble and wonder-working 
power. By the bodily eye we can set things seen 
and temporal before ourselves ; but by the spiritual 
eye we can set before ourselves things unseen and 
eternal. By our inward eye we are able to see 
God as we kneel down before Him. We seek His 
face: and He lifts upon us the light of His counten¬ 
ance sometimes, like the Psalmist, when we “ con¬ 
sider the heavens, the work of His fingers, the moon 
and the stars which He has ordained.” We set 
their Maker and our Maker before us, and we fall 
down in wonder and in worship saying, How great 
Thou art, 0 God ! At another time we cast our 


94 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


inward eye back on the God of Abraham, and the 
God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and the God 
of Moses and Isaiah ; but best of all on the God 
and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
And when we do so, when we set Him before us as 
He was revealed to all these sons and servants of 
His, then, as we go on doing so, He becomes more 
to us than all His creatures ; and Heaven begins 
with us to take the place of earth. Such, even in 
this life, do they become who truly “ set the Lord 
before them ” in prayer. Such do they become 
who are taught of David and of Jesus Christ thus 
to pray, and thus to praise, and thus to walk with 
God, and thus to have their conversation in Heaven. 

Our Lord did not say to His disciples in so many 
words that they were to set Him, their Master, 
always before them when they prayed. But, all 
the same, He meant it. And after He went away 
from them, and went home to His glory, the Holy 
Ghost soon made all the apostles see that He had 
meant it. And thus it is that we see, in the Epistles 
of Paul and the rest of the Apostles, such a new 
departure, so to speak, in prayer. David's psalms 
and prayers are the very best of their kind, and for 
their day. But Paul’s prayers are of quite another 
- kind : they belong to quite another dispensation, 
as we say. There has not been a greater at prayer 
and praise, born of women, than David : but the 
least New Testament saint is, or he might be, far 


THE PSALMIST AND HIS LORD 95 


greater at prayer than even David. And that, 
because the least New Testament saint has the 
Lord Jesus to set before him in prayer, which David, 
with all his genius, and with all his grace, had not. 
Everybody must surely see that: even he who 
never thought about that till this morning—even 
he must see that “ No man hath seen God at any 
time ” : no, not Moses : no, not David. “ But 
the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the 
Father, He hath declared Him. That which we 
have seen and heard declare we unto you, that 
you may have your fellowship with us.” 

We envy the twelve disciples who saw their Divine 
Master every day, and had His face and figure 
printed on their hearts and minds every day. What 
would we not give just to have seen our Lord’s face 
and figure for once ! To have seen Him when He 
was blessing the little children, with one of them in 
His arms ! To have seen His face, and heard His 
voice, when He spread His skirt over the woman 
who was washing His feet with her tears ! To have 
seen and heard His intercessory prayer with His 
eyes lifted up to Heaven after the supper ! Or, 
again, when He said, “ Father, forgive them ; for 
they know not what they do ! ” It was easy for 
Peter and James and John to set their Lord always 
before them ! It was very easy for John to write 
that he had “ an Advocate with the Father,” when 
he remembered so well his Advocate's face, and the 


96 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


very tones of His voice. I could very easily be 
made a believer in Veronica’s handkerchief, so much 
in this matter is the wish with me father to the 
thought ! But no ! Our times are in His hand, and 
our lot in this life. And we must not forget that 
these are His own words to us on this very matter— 
these words—“ It is the Spirit that quickeneth : 
the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak 
unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life.” 
“ Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast 
believed : blessed are they that have not seen, and 
yet have believed.” And thus it is that the four 
evangelists, who had so seen and so handled the 
Word of Life, put their book into our hands, saying 
as they do so,—these things about our Lord and 
yours write we unto you that you may have your 
fellowship with us. 

Now, if David could set Jehovah always before 
him in his prayers and in his psalms,—Jehovah, 
Whom no man could see and live,—how much more 
should we set Jesus Christ before us? Jesus 
Christ, Who, being the Son of God, became the 
Son of Man for this very purpose. And, so we 
shall! For, what state of life is there ?—what 
need ? what distress ? what perplexity ? what 
sorrow ? what sin ? what dominion and what 
disease of sin ? what possible condition can we 
ever be in on earth?—in which we cannot set 
Jesus Christ before us in prayer and in faith, 


THE PSALMIST AND HIS LORD 97 


and for help, and for assurance, and for victory ? 
Who are you ? and what are you ? and what is 
your request and your petition ? Open your 
New Testament, take it with you to your knees, and 
set Jesus Christ out of it before you. Are you like 
David in the 63rd Psalm ? Is your soul thirsting 
for God, and is your flesh longing for God in a dry 
and thirsty land where no water is ? Then set 
Jesus at the well of Samaria before the eyes of your 
thirsty heart. And, again, set Him before your 
heart when He stood on the last day, that great 
day of the feast, and cried, saying, “ If any man 
thirst let him come to Me and drink.” Or, are you 
like David after the matter of Uriah ? “ For, day 

and night, Thy hand was heavy upon me : my 
moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” 
Then set Him before you who says : “I am not 
come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. 
They that be whole need not a physician, but they 
that are sick.” Or, are you the unhappy father 
of a prodigal son ? Then, set your Father in 
Heaven always before you : and set the Son of 
God always before you as He composes and preaches 
the parable of all parables for you and for your 
son. Or, are you that son yourself ? Then, never 
lie down at night till you have again read that 
peculiar parable for you, and set your father and 
your mother before you. Or, are you a mother 
with a daughter possessed of a devil ? In that 
7 


98 LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

case set Jesus Christ, when He was in the borders 
of Tyre and Sidon, before you ; and listen to what 
He says to the woman who begged for the crumbs 
under the table : The devil, He said to her, is gone 
out of thy daughter. Or, are you a happy mother 
with your children still, so many little angels in 
their innocence and their beauty round about you ? 
Then I am sure of you ! You never kiss your 
sleeping child, I feel sure, without thinking of Mary, 
and how she must have kissed her sleeping child, 
and hid all these things in her heart. Or, to come 
to a very different kind of person—Are you loaded 
with the curses of people who were once in your 
cruel power : widows and orphans, and poor and 
friendless people ? Then, as often as you remember 
their misery and your own—set your Redeemer 
before you, who, when He came to the place, 
looked up and saw Zacchseus, and said unto him, 
“ Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down: for 
to-day I must abide at thy house. . . . This day is 
salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also 
is a son of Abraham/’ Or, again, after twelve 
years of many physicians, are you nothing better, 
but rather worse ? Then set Him before you till 
you are healed of your plague—Him who turned 
and said : Who touched Me ? Or are you a minister 
with such a message that all your people are walk¬ 
ing no more with you ? Then rest your heart on 
Him who said to the Twelve ; “Will ye also go 



THE PSALMIST AND HIS LORD 99 


away ? ” And on Him who said on another 
occasion, “ But other fell into good ground, and 
brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some 
sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.” And, O thou afflicted, 
tossed with tempest, and not comforted, see Him 
coming to the ship, walking on the sea : and see Him, 
at another time, in another ship asleep on a pillow : 
and hear His rebuke, “ O thou of little faith, 
wherefore didst thou doubt ? ” Or, to come to the 
uttermost of all: are you tortured with your own 
heart, till you cannot believe that they are worse 
tortured in hell itself ? Then look at His face of 
infinite pity as He says to His disciples, “ For, 
from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil 
thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts 
covetousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolish¬ 
ness : all these evil things come from within.” And, 
if there is any other manner of man here, for whose 
soul no man cares, let that man set the Good 
Shepherd before him as He says : “I am the door; 
by Me if any man enter in he shall go in and out, 
and find pasture.” And, again, " Come unto Me, all 
ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest.” Sinners! set your Saviour always 
before you ! Child of God ! set your Father in 
Heaven, and His Son from Heaven, always before 
you! And, because They are at your right hand, 

you shall not be greatly moved. 

And, then, He has appointed special times, and 


100 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


special places, and special circumstances, and special 
accompaniments of prayer: at which times, in 
which places, and amid which accompaniments 
and circumstances He will be specially present, and 
will in an especial manner set Himself before you. 
Seize those golden, but irrecoverable opportunities ; 
seize them so that He shall never be able to say to 
you that He never knew you. His own word, for 
one. Never open the New Testament till you have 
said to yourself : “ Now, O my soul, let us proceed 
no further till we have set Him of Whom we are now 
to read before us ! ” Never hear a chapter of the 
Gospel read without seeing, as if you had been there, 
all that is read about. Be for the time, in Bethlehem, 
and in Nazareth, and in Galilee, and in Jerusalem, 
and in the Garden, and on Golgotha, and on Olivet. 
Never see His Name even in pen or pencil, and 
never hear His Name in a sermon, or in a psalm or 
prayer, without seeing His face at the same time 
and falling down before Him. And when you are 
in your own place of prayer, do not be in a hurry 
to get on with your prayer and to get done with it. 
If need be, He can make the sun stand still to give 
you time to pray. Never kneel without at the same 
time shutting your eyes on all earthly things, and 
setting God on His Throne in Heaven, and Jesus 
Christ in His intercession, before you. Take time. 
It is lost time to speak to the wall. Take time till 
you are quite sure that you have His ear. Be 


THE PSALMIST AND HIS LORD 101 


silent till you have something to say. And then, 
say it not into the air, but into the ear and the heart 
of Jesus Christ. For He has an ear and a heart too, 
and they are both, if you like, open to you. You 
are at family worship, say, and you open your hymn- 
book, and you come on John Newton’s sweet hymn : 

How sweet the name of Jesus sounds 
In a believer's ear! 

Yes, but does it at that moment sound sweet in 
your ear ? Are you that believer ? And is 
your ear full in a moment, of an unearthly sweet¬ 
ness ? You are a believer, and your ear is full 
of that sweetness, when you set the Owner of 
that Name always before you. 

Jesus, my Shepherd, Husband, Friend: 

# 

and on the spot you are a lost sheep, a woman for¬ 
saken and a friendless outcast—all met, all satisfied, 
and all aglow with the love of Christ shed abroad 
in your heart. 

My Prophet, Priest and King: 

and all that is within you is that moment at His feet! 

My Lord, my Life, my Way, my End, 

Accept the praise I bring: 

and the praise you bring is all, at that moment, 
accepted; and all because you did set the Lord 
before you. 

You remember what is told of that old saint who 
so set the cross and its bleeding Bui den before 


102 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


him, that the five wounds actually came down from 
off the Cross, and printed themselves on his hands 
and on his feet and on his side. It is a parable of 
what takes place every day in every true saint of 
God and disciple of Christ. They set their dying 
Lord always before them till they are crucified with 
Him and till they bear about in the body the dying 
of the Lord Jesus. Join the great saints in this 
their crucifixion with Christ. My brethren, set the 
Lord Jesus on His Cross and on His Throne before 
you in all your psalms, in all your prayers, in all 
your Scriptures, and at all times, till He is ever with 
you : and till it would not surprise you to feel His 
hand laid on your head, and to look up and see His 
face some night-watch as you so abide before Him. 
Set your Lord, in all these ways, before you, till, 
suddenly, some midnight soon, the Bridegroom is 
with you and you are for ever with Him ! Even so, 
come quickly, Lord Jesus ! 


IX 


HABAKKUK—ON HIS WATCH-TOWER 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower.”— 
Hab. ii. i. 

Habakkuk’s tower was not built of stone and lime 
Hiram’s Tyrian workmen, with all their skill in 
hewn stone, and in timber, and in iron, and in brass, 
had no hand in building Habakkuk’s tower. “ The 
Name of the Lord ” was Habakkuk’s high tower. 
The truth and the faithfulness and the power of 
God—these things were the deep and broad founda¬ 
tions of Habakkuk’s high tower, into which he con¬ 
tinually escaped, and from the high top of which 
he was wont to look out upon the land, and up to his 
God. God’s grace and mercy and long-suffering 
were the doors and stairs, were the walls and battle¬ 
ments, of Habakkuk’s high tower; and God’s sure 
salvation was the golden and the far-shining roof of 
it. “ Art Thou not from everlasting,”—prayed 
this prophet as often as he again stood upon 
his watch and set himself upon his tower, O 
Lord, my God, mine Holy One ? We shall not 

die.” 


103 


104 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


The Chaldeans had, by this time, overrun the 
whole land. Judah and Jerusalem had for long 
been full of all but unpardonable sin. God’s chosen 
and covenant people had despised and forsaken God. 
The law of God was “ slacked,” till the land was full 
of all unrighteousness. And thus it was that this 
judgment of God had already gone forth against 
Judah and Jerusalem : “ Lo, I raise up the Chal¬ 
deans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall 
march through the breadth of the land, to possess 
the dwelling-places that are not theirs. They are 
terrible and dreadful. . . . Their horses also are 
swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than 
the evening wolves : . . . they shall fly as the eagle 
that hasteth to eat. They shall come all for violence : 
. . . and they shall gather the captivity as the 
sand.” And it was so. It was very much as if the 
Turks of our day had been let loose on England, 
and Scotland, and Edinburgh. It was amid the 
indescribable cruelties and horrors of the invasion 
and possession of Judah and Jerusalem by the 
Chaldeans that Habakkuk took up his burden. 
And Habakkuk the prophet was alone : he was 
alone, and had no fellow in the midst of all those 
desolate years. Alone !—and with his faith very 
hard pressed between God, in His righteous anger 
on the one hand, and guilty Judah, under her great 
agony and oppression, on the other hand. And we 
have this great and noble-hearted prophet in all the 


HABAKKUK—ON HIS WATCH-TOWER 105 


heat and burden of his work,—in his faith, and in his 
prayer, and in his songs,—all set before us with 
extraordinary beauty and impressiveness in this 
wonderful little book : a book little in size, indeed, 
but a book rich and great in divine substance, and 
in intellectual and spiritual power of every kind. “ O 
Lord, how long shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear! 
even cry out unto Thee of violence, and Thou wilt 
not save! Why dost Thou shew me iniquity, and 
cause me to behold grievance ? For spoiling and 
violence are before me: . . . and the wicked doth 
compass about the righteous . . . but I will stand 
upon my watch, and I will set me upon the tower, 
and I will watch to see what He will say to me. . . . 
And the Lord answered me and said, Write the 
vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may 
run that readeth it.” And, at that, the prophet 
immediately came down from his tower ; and had 
great tablets made by the workman; and he wrote 
this text upon the tables,—this text, “ The just shall 
live by his faith.” And he had the tables hung up 
on the temple walls, and on the gates and on the 
market-places of the city ; till he who ran from the 
oppression of the enemy, as well as he who ran to 
take up arms against the oppressor, might read the 
legend,—this legend,—that “ The just shall live by 
his faith.” The Chaldeans understood not the 
tables, but the oppressed people of God understood 
them ; till it abides a proverb, and an encourage- 


106 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


ment, and a doctrine, and a sure hope to this day,— 
that “ The just shall live by faith.” 

i. In a profound and far-reaching passage,—in 
two profound and far-reaching passages indeed,— 
Pascal impresses on us, out of such Scripture as this, 
that our own passions are our only enemies. Our 
real enemies, with all their cruelty and all their 
oppression, come up upon us,—not out of Chaldea, 
but out of our own heart Chaldea, with all her 
cruel and aggrandising ambition, would never have 
been allowed to cross the Jordan and let loose in 
Judah, but for Judah’s sin. And it was Judah’s 
continuing transgression and persisting impeni¬ 
tence that kept the Chaldeans in possession of 
Judah and Jerusalem. All which is written in the 
prophet, with Pascal’s profound and spiritual in¬ 
terpretation of the prophet, for our learning, and 
for our very closest and most practical application 
to ourselves. Let this, then, be laid to heart by 
all God’s people, that their sinful hearts, and sinful 
lives, while they are in this present life, are always, 
more or less, like the land of Judah under the cruel 
occupation of the Chaldeans. Our sins, my 
brethren, have brought the bitterest of all our 
chastisements upon us, that is, upon our souls. Not 
every child of God among us has yet spirituality of 
mind enough, or personal experience enough, to see 
and to admit that. Judah did not easily and will¬ 
ingly see and admit that. But Habakkuk in his 


HABAKKUK— ON HIS WATCH-TOWER 107 


day, and Pascal in our day, saw it: they both saw 
it; and wrote powerfully and convincingly and 
with splendid comfort concerning it. And many 
of God’s people among yourselves, by much experi- 
ence, by much prayer, by a sinful heart and a 
holy life taken together, are themselves prophets,— 
prophets and philosophers : wise men, that is, in 
the deepest things, both of God, and of the soul of 
man. And one of those deepest things is just this 
—that God chastises sin by means of sin. He 
employs the remaining sinfulness of the sanctified 
heart as His last and His best instrument for 
reaching down into the depths of the heart in order 
to its complete discovery, complete correction, and 
complete purification. There is no tyranny so 
terrible, there is no invasion and captivity of the 
soul one-thousandth part so horrible, and so hated 
of all God’s saints, as is their captivity to their own 
sins Those whose true torments and tortures come, 
never from without, but always from within : those 
whose abidingly bad hearts are being made God’s 
cruellest scourge,—both for their past sins, and 
for their present sinfulness ,—they will consent and 
subscribe to all that this great prophet says in the 
terrible account that he gives of the Chaldeans. 
" That bitter and hasty nation: which march 
through the breadth of the land, to possess dwelling- 
places that are not theirs. They are terrible and 
dreadful.” “ They are proud : they enlarge their 


108 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


desire like hell: they are as death itself : they 
cannot be satisfied. . . . Shall they not rise up 
suddenly that shall bite thee ? And awake that 
shall vex thee ? And thou shalt be for a booty to 
them, O Jerusalem ! ” All of which is but a cruel 
parable to some of us concerning our own sins. So 
truly does our God also, in His grace and truth, 
still make His own so sovereign, and so spiritual, 
use of our remaining and deep-rooted sinfulness. In 
His wisdom, and in His love, at one stroke, He does 
these two divinest of things :—securing the greatest 
depth, the greatest inwardness and the greatest 
spirituality for our sanctification ; and, at the same 
time, securing, more and more every day, our fear 
and hatred and horror at our own hearts, as at 
nothing else on earth or in hell. Is that your mind, 
my brethren ? Is that your experience ? “ The 

spiritual understood Chaldea of their passions,” says 
Pascal. “ The unspiritual, and the still carnal- 
minded, understood it of Chaldea only. The term 
‘ enemy,* ” he adds, “ and Chaldea is obscure and 
ambiguous only to the unspiritual in mind and in 
heart.” Let all students of Holy Scripture, and of 
the heart of man, study Pascal. 

2. Look, now, at that man of God, who is like 
Habakkuk in our own days. Look at that prophet 
upon his tower in our own city. He has climbed 
up far above us, his fellows, into a calm and clear 
air : and he has so climbed by means of much 


HABAKKUK—ON HIS WATCH-TOWER 109 


prayer, and by means of much meditation, and by 
means of much secret self-denial of many kinds. 
He has a time and a place of retreat, and of purifica¬ 
tion, and of exaltation of mind, that we know 
nothing of. He may be a minister ; most likely he 
is : or he may be a busy business man, as sometimes 
he is. He may be well known to us to be a man like 
Habakkuk : or, he may be hidden even from him¬ 
self. Sometimes he is old : and, not seldom, he 
is young. In any case, he is our Habakkuk. 
Habakkuk, with his own burden, and sometimes 
with ours. “ O Lord,” he cries on his watch, " how 
long shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear! ” " But 

I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the 
tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto 
me.” There are men among us who do not neglect 
prayer, who yet sadly neglect to watch and wait for 
God’s promised answer to their prayers. Prayer, 
when we think of it, and perform it aright,— 
prayer is a magnificent thing—and a venturesome, 
—for any man to do. For prayer builds, and fits 
out, and mans, and launches a frail vessel of faith 
on the deep and wide sea of God’s sovereignty : 
and sets her sails for a harbour nothing short of 
heaven. And, then, the wise merchantman gives 
God, and his ship, time to be on her way back 
again : and then, like Habakkuk, he sets himself on 
his high tower. All his interests are now upjthere. 
As Paul has it—all his conversation is in heaven : 


110 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


all his treasures and all his affections are launched 
on that sea-adventure he is now so intensely watch¬ 
ing up there. I am convinced, my brethren, that 
we lose many answers to our prayers,—not so 
much because we do not pray, as because we do not 
go up to our tower to watch for and to welcome 
God's answers to our prayers. “ Why should I 
answer?”—our God may well say to His waiting 
and ministering angels. “ Why should I answer 
him ? He pays no attention to My answer to his 
prayer. He is never on his watch, when I send My 
answer. And, even when I do send My answers to 
his house and to his heart, he takes them and holds 
them as common and everyday things. He never 
wonders at My grace to him. He never performs 
his vow for My goodness to him. He holds a 
thousand,—he and his—of My benefits : but he 
does not seem to know it.” My brethren, I am 
as sure as I am standing here, that we would all 
get far more, and far more wonderful answers to 
prayer, if only we were far more on the outlook for 
them. Habakkuk never made a holier or a more 
fruitful resolve than when he said, “ I will stand 
upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and 
will watch to see what He will say unto me.” 

3. There were many shapes and sizes of towers in 
the land of Judah, and they were put, of the people 
of Judah and Jerusalem, to many and various 
uses. Their city walls would rise up, all round their 


HABAKKUK—ON HIS WATCH-TOWER 111 


cities, into strong towers, both for defence and for 
beauty. Immense towers were built also by the 
military engineers of those days on frontiers, and 
on passes, and on peaks, and on exposed situations. 
To protect a great well also, a strong stone tower 
would be built, so as to secure safety to the flocks 
of cattle and sheep that came to the well and to its 
waters to drink. No vineyard worth anything to 
its owner was ever left without its tower,—both to 
lodge the keeper of the vineyard, and to be the home 
of the grape-gatherers at the grape-gathering 
season. Till, all over the land, and all round the 
city, all kinds of towers stood up to give life, and 
strength, and beauty to the whole landscape. 

And so it is in the Church of Christ. Till He who 
sees His own holy land as no eye but His sees it: 
He who sees every soldier and watchman, and 
vinedresser, and keeper of sheep, in it: He who 
has His sleepless eye on every praying and expect¬ 
ing soul,—He sees His Holy Land, and His Holy 
City, encompassed, and ramparted, and orna¬ 
mented with ten thousand such towers : and He 
never long leaves any such tower without its proper 
and appointed vision. For, as often as any watch¬ 
ing soul says, “ I will stand upon my watch, and 
will set me upon my tower,” the Lord who spake 
to Habakkuk says to us the same thing : " Though 
it tarry, wait for it j because it will surely come, it 
will not tarry.” And, there is nothing that our 


112 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


Lord says so often as just this ,—He says it every 
morning, indeed, and every night to all who wait for 
Him,—“ The just ,” He says without ceasing, “ shall 
live by his faith .” Till one tower answers that 
vision, that password and watchword, to another; 
till all the land rings with it, and echoes with 
it. The Lord speaks it first to Habakkuk, and 
Habakkuk to Paul, and Paul to Rome and Galatia, 
and Rome and Galatia to us ; and still the same 
counsel and comfort keeps on counselling all the 
dwellers in their lonely towers, “ The just shall live 
by faith.” What Habakkuk wrote six hundred 
years before Christ on the gates, and walls, and 
pillars of Jerusalem—that very same word of God 
the Holy Spirit of God is writing on the tables that 
are in the believing hearts of all God’s people still: 
“ Being justified by faith we have peace with God ” : 
“ By grace ye are saved through faith ” : “ The just 
shall live by his faith.” He shall live,—not so 
much by the fulfilment of all God’s promises ; nor 
by God’s full answers to his prayers and expecta¬ 
tions ; nor by the full deliverance of his soul from 
his bitter enemies ; nor by the full and final ex¬ 
pulsion of the Chaldeans : but he shall live, amid 
all these troubles, and till they come to an end for 
ever,—he shall live by his firm faith in God, and 
in the future which is all in God’s hand. And thus 
it is that, whatever our oppression and persecution 
may be, whatever our prayer and wherever and 


HABAKKUK—ON HIS WATCH-TOWER 113 

whatever our waiting tower, still this old and ever 
new vision and answer comes : Faith : Faith : and 
Faith only. Rest and trust in God. Commit thy 
way to God. Be thine enemy from beyond the 
Euphrates, or be he out of the evil of thine own 
heart,—keep on in prayer. Keep on watching. 
Keep thyself on thy Tower. Keep saying, keep 
singing : 

For thou art God that dost 
To me salvation send. 

And I upon Thee all the day 
Expecting do attend. 

Go up every new day into Habakkuk’s high 
tower. And take up his prayer and his hope. Art 
Thou not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, mine 
Holy One ? I shall not die. Say you also, “ I shall 
not die.” That is faith. That is the very faith by 
which the just have been enabled to live in all ages 
of the Church of God. No man ever died under 
the hand of his enemy who so believed in God, and 
in the power and grace of God. You may some¬ 
times be afraid that you are to be left to die in your 
sin and sorrow. So was Habakkuk sometimes. 
“ 0 Lord, I heard Thy speech, and was afraid.” 
Habakkuk was afraid to face the whole long, un¬ 
broken, unrelieved life of faith, and of faith only. 
Habakkuk would be up on his tower again to see 
if there were no signs of the Chaldeans leaving the 
land. At another time he would stand upon his 
tower, and look if none of Judah s old alliances 
8 


114 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


were coming to her help. But still the full vision 
of his salvation tarried, till he came to seek his 
salvation, not in any outward thing whatsoever ; 
not even in complete deliverance from the Chal¬ 
deans, but in God, —whether the Chaldeans were 
in possession of Judah, and Jerusalem, or driven 
out of it. Till, taught of God, as he dwelt more and 
more with God in his high tower, Habakkuk was 
able to rise and attain to this,—to this which is 
one of the highest attainments of faith, and hope, 
and love in all the Old Testament,—“ Yet I will 
rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my 
salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He 
will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and He will make 
me to walk upon mine high places.” 

4 . The Chaldeans with all their overwhelming 
invasions, and with all their cruel oppressions, have, 
then, been made Habakkuk’s salvation. “ They 
took possession of dwelling-places that were not 
theirs ” : till Habakkuk was compelled to seek a 
dwelling-place that even they, with all their horses 
like leopards, and all their horsemen like evening 
wolves, could not invade. They had hunted 
Habakkuk all his life, up into his high tower, till he 
is now far more of his time in his high tower than 
he is on the street, or even in the temple of Jeru¬ 
salem. And till, at last, Habakkuk has come to 
this, that he asks for no more in this world but to be 
let walk on his “ high place ” into which he has been 


HABAKKUK—ON HIS WATCH-TOWER 115 


wont so often to climb. In Paul’s seraphic words, 
Habakkuk’s whole conversation is now in heaven. 
He has gone up upon his high tower so often, and 
has set himself for such long seasons on his watch, 
that he is now far more in heaven than on earth. 
Habakkuk will not only, all his remaining days, 
** watch ” and “ wait ” on his high tower, but 
Habakkuk will walk there. He will dwell there. 
His true home and his sure dwelling-place will be up 
there . Till, when the “ beatific vision ” comes,— 
which will soon come to Habakkuk, and will not 
tarry, — it will find him walking, and waiting for 
it on his high places. ‘‘If ye then be risen with 
Christ, seek those things which are above, where 
Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your 
affection on things above, and not on things on the 
earth. . . . When Christ, who is our Life, shall 
appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in 
glory/' 


X 


OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. i. 

“ And for their sakes I sanctify Myself . . — John xvii. 19. 

“ I have an exceedingly complex idea of sanctifica¬ 
tion,” says John Wesley in his Journal. And that 
must surely be an exceedingly complex sanctifica¬ 
tion, pursuit, attainment and experience which 
embraces both our Lord and all His disciples,— 
both Him who knew no sin, and those disciples of 
His who know nothing but sin. 

But what exactly is sanctification ? What is 
sanctification both in its complexity and in its 
simplicity ? Well, “ Sanctification,” according to 
the Catechism, “ is the work of God’s free grace, 
whereby we are renewed in the whole man, after 
the image of God, and are enabled, more and more, 
to die unto sin, and to live unto righteousness.” 
Now, to begin with, in all the complexity and com¬ 
pleteness of our Lord’s sanctification, could He have 
subscribed to that catechism ? Could He have 
signed what all our deacons sign ? When He 
examined Himself before every approaching pass- 
over, would He have found all that going forward 

116 


OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF 117 

within Himself ? Yes,—most certainly, He would, 
every single syllable of it. For it was of His 
Father’s “ free grace ” that He, the man Christ 
Jesus, the carpenter’s son, was what He was, and 
did what He did. He was “ renewed in the whole 
man ” also, ere ever He was a man. And for. thirty 
years, this, our Lord’s sanctification, grew in all 
its complexity and completeness till He was mani¬ 
fested to Israel as the very Image of God among 
men. And, while all His days “ dead to sins,” He 
was enabled more and more every day to die to sin 
and to “ live unto righteousness,” till in the text, 
and within a few hours of His death on the cross, 
He is still sanctifying Himself—that is, surrendering 
Himself, dedicating Himself, devoting Himself, to 
fulfil and to finish His Father’s will, and to accom¬ 
plish the salvation of all whom the Father hath 
given Him. “ For their sakes I sanctify Myself; 
that they also might be sanctified through the 
truth.” 

It was only after an immense “ complexity ” of 
ceremonial, indeed, but also of moral and spiritual 
sanctification, that the high priest in Israel was able 
to enter the Holy of Holies, there to make acceptable 
intercession for the people. And in the whole of 
this great intercessory prayer of our Lord, and in 
the whole of the corresponding Epistle to the 
Hebrews, we see through what an inwardness and 
spirituality and " complexity,” both of personal 


118 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and of official sanctification, our Lord was prepared, 
and made perfect, for His crowning office of our Great 
High Priest. The angel Gabriel described Him as 
“ that holy thing ” before He was born. “ For 
such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, 
undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher 
than the heavens.” In His own words, and with 
His eyes lifted up to heaven : “ Father, the hour is 
come : and for their sakes,”—looking round on the 
Eleven,—“ I sanctify Myself.” 

Now, here again, my brethren,—for it meets us 
at every turn,—as He was, so are we, in our measure, 
in this world. As many of us, that is, as are chosen, 
and called, and ordained, and anointed for the sake 
of other men, as well as for our own sake. We are 
to be God’s remembrancers on the earth. We 
are to be men of prayer, and especially of inter¬ 
cessory prayer. We are to be, for a time, in this 
world, that which our Lord is everlastingly in heaven. 
We are to be kings and priests unto God and His 
Father by the blood of the Lamb. As He was 
sanctified, as He sanctified Himself, for their sake, 
so is it to be with us. As He was in His life of 
holiness, and consequent intercession, so are we to 
be in this world. We must sanctify ourselves for 
the sake of others. We must first sanctify ourselves, 
and then pray, first for ourselves, and then for others. 
And that is not our Lord’s command and example 
only. Apart from all that, it stands to reason, 


OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF 119 


and it stands to experience. Every kind of 
prayer, not intercessory prayer only, which is the 
highest land of prayer, but all prayer, from the 
lowest kind to the highest, is impossible in a life 
of known and allowed sin. The blind man’s re¬ 
tort upon the Pharisees is his retort upon us to 
this day,—“ Now we know that God heareth not 
sinners.” No ! No man’s prayer is acceptable 
with God whose life is not well-pleasing before God. 
The very ploughing of the wicked is sin. We all 
know that in ourselves. The man in this house 
with the least and the lowest religious experience,— 
he has enough in himself to convince him that sin 
and prayer cannot both live at the same time in the 
same heart. Admit sin, and you banish prayer. 
But, on the other hand, entertain, and encourage, 
and practise prayer, and sin will sooner or later 
flee before it : and entertain and practise inter¬ 
cessory prayer, and you will, by degrees, and in 
process of time, sanctify yourself to an inwardness 
and to a spirituality, and to a complexity, and to a 
simplicity that hitherto you have had no experience 
of, no conception of, and indeed no ambition after. 

Now, having said “ ambition,”—Who has this 
holy ambition ? Who has the ambition to be bound 
up in the bundle of life with the Saviour of men ? 
Who has the high heart to shine at last as the bright¬ 
ness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever 
and ever ? Are you able to drink of your Lord s 


120 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


cup of sanctification, so as to sit with Him on His 
throne ? Are you willing to wear, not only the ring 
and the shoes of a returning prodigal, but, in addi¬ 
tion, the crown and the mitre of a king and a priest 
unto God ? Then,—take this text out of your 
Lord’s mouth, and make it henceforth your own. 
Look at Him! Look every day at Him! Never 
take your eyes off Him ! “ Lift your eyes to 

heaven” — just like Him; and, like Him, say, 
as He said that great night of sanctification and 
prayer, " Father, Holy Father ! For their sakes I 
also sanctify myself.” 

The first human ears these wonderful words ever 
fell on were the ears of the Eleven. Their Master 
had chosen the Eleven to be the future preachers of 
the Gospel, and pastors of the flock. They heard all 
their Lord’s words, both of counsel and of comfort, 
and of prayer that night; only, they did not under¬ 
stand what they heard. But, after their Master’s 
Crucifixion, and Resurrection, and Ascension, and 
after the Pentecostal Outpouring of the Holy Spirit 
—then, all these things came back to their under¬ 
standing and their remembrance. And, as time 
went on, there was nothing in that Great Prayer 
the Apostles remembered more in their daily ministry 
than just this : “ For their sakes I sanctify Myself.” 
They remembered these words every day, and they 
saw something of the unfathomable and inexhaustible 
depth of these words, as they worked out their 


OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF 121 


own salvation, and the salvation of their people, in 
a daily life of increasing holiness and intercessory 
prayer. And those ministers of our own day are 
the true successors of the Eleven, who most closely 
imitate them in their life of sanctification : and that, 
with a view to intercessory prayer. He alone deserves 
to be called a minister of Christ and of His Church 
who, on the day of his ordination, looks round on 
his people, and says,—“ For their sakes I sanctify 
myself; ” and more and more says it with every 
returning Sabbath morning. ‘‘For their sakes,” 
he will say, “ I dedicate and devote myself. For 
their sakes I keep myself at peace with God. For 
their sakes I practise the Presence of God. I seek 
more and more to please God for their sakes. To 
please Him and to please them. For their sakes I 
sanctify myself.” And, what an incomparable 
sanctification that is, and what a shipwreck it is 
for any minister to miss it ! What a complex, what 
a spiritual, what an endless, what an incessant 
sanctification ! In every new sermon there is some 
new sanctification for a preacher, and for his people. 
First and best for him ; and, then, after him, for 
them. " Sanctify them through Thy truth : Thy 
word is truth.” In every pastoral visit, at every 
sick-bed, at every death-bed, at every open grave, 
what a complex sanctification for a true minister 
every day ! And, then, every night, what a corre¬ 
spondingly complex intercession for his people ! 


122 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


Every man in his congregation,—little known to 
the man himself,—has some new and secret and 
stolen sanctification hidden about him for his 
minister. Every man’s humility, lowliness of mind, 
and love: every man’s rudeness, ill-nature, in¬ 
gratitude, and insolence, hardness to move, stubborn¬ 
ness to turn, pride not to be told the truth. And, 
in the face of all that, a minister’s own folly, ignor¬ 
ance, unteachableness, offensiveness, idleness,— 
and all the other vices of the ministerial heart 
and life and office. Men and brethren, what a 
complex, what a splendid sanctification is here ! 
Not for you. At any rate, not immediately for 
you : but for your ministers ; and, then, through 
their consequent intercessions, for you. What a 
scope! What a field! What an opportunity! 
For that man’s sake, what meekness and humility 
in his minister ! For that man’s sake, what for¬ 
giveness and long-suffering ! For that man’s sake, 
what courage and boldness ! And for that man’s 
sake, what patience and what hope against hope ! 
And for all men’s sakes, what self-condemnation 
and constant contrition of heart ! But who is 
sufficient for all these things ? Who but he that 
has something of the mind and experience of Christ 
as to the universality, and the malignity, and the 
irremediableness of sin; as also of the power of 
prayer, and prayer out of a holier and an ever-holier 
life ? O young men ! O gifted young men ! 0 


OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF 123 


ambitious young men! O courageous and great¬ 
hearted young men ! Choose the pulpit for your 
life-work! Choose the pastorate! Choose, and 
endure to the end in this incomparable sanctifica¬ 
tion. Only, rather beg your bread, rather break 
stones on the roadside than enter the ministry, 
unless you are determined to know nothing, day 
nor night, but to sanctify yourselves for their sakes ! 

But, almost more than any minister, let every 
father and mother among us see to it that they 
make this blessed Scripture the law and the rule 
of their family life. Let very Nature herself come 
in here to supplement and to strengthen grace. 
Let all fathers, and all mothers, look round upon 
their families every day, and say together before 
God : For their sakes we sanctify ourselves. Every 
father and mother makes daily intercession before 
God in the behalf of their children. But, if they 
would succeed in that, they must do more than 
that. They must add sanctification to intercession. 
They must learn of Christ the true secret of His 
intercessory and prevailing prayer. They must lay 
this too long-neglected text to heart,— ' For their 
sakes I sanctify myself.” 

What is it that makes you pray with such secret 
tears for that son of yours ? What is it that makes 
you so remorseful as you see him growing up so fast 
in your house, and not at the same time growing 
in grace, and in wisdom, and in the favour of God ? 


124 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

Is it not that you cannot but see so much of yourself 
in your ill-fated son ? So much of your own 
wilfulness and selfishness, and pride, and bad temper, 
and incipient sensuality, and what not. It is what 
he has inherited from you that causes you such 
remorse, sometimes, that ever he was begotten of 
you. It is this that makes you pray for yourself, 
and for him, with such passionate importunity. All 
that is well; but even all that is not enough. Have 
you ever tried sanctification,—self-sanctification,— 
upon your son, upon yourself, and upon God ? 
Try still more sanctification of yourself, before you 
despair, and give up hope. I say it in His house 
and in His presence : and He will speak out, and 
will contradict it if it is not true. God cannot resist 
a parent's prayer when it is sufficiently backed up 
with a parent's sanctification. I say it to you, in 
His hearing, that, though He will not answer your 
most importunate prayer by itself : yet, because 
of your sanctification added to it, He will say to 
you : Be it unto you all that you will! Make 
experiment by still more sanctification. Sanctify, 
clean out of yourself, all that it so pains and con¬ 
founds you to see reproduced in your son. Con¬ 
temporaneously with your prayers and your counsels, 
carry you on a secret assault both upon God and 
upon your son through a still more secret and a 
still more complete sanctification of yourself. Leave 
nothing undone so that all your prayers and all 


OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF 125 

your reproofs may have their full and unbroken 
force, both upon God and upon your son. 

It is a very fine sight to see a father taking on 
a new, and a better, and a more modern education 
alongside of his son. What a happy household 
that is when a father is open to all his sons’ tutors 
and schoolmasters both in nature, and in providence, 
and in grace—the father and the son still keeping 
step together in the great school of life. That is 
wise, and noble, and beautiful, and very fruitful. 
Now, let all fathers, in like manner, sanctify them¬ 
selves through their sons. Let them modernise 
and freshen up, and carry on, and complete their 
sanctification also, seeing themselves as in a glass, 
in their son’s sin and salvation. It is supremely 
for this that God setteth His solitaries in families. 
It is of such a family that the prophet speaks when 
all the rest of the earth has been smitten with a 
curse. All the earth, that is, but that house where 
the heart of the father has been turned to the child, 
and the heart of the child to the father: that 
house in which the father says, in the words of the 
text,—“ For the sake of my son I will sanctify 
myself.” 

It is altogether too dreadful to speak about 
the “curse” with which God smites some un¬ 
sanctified fathers. And, who can tell, among so 
many fathers here, but that curse may not have 
begun to fall ? There may be a hidden horror in 


126 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


some father’s heart here that he does not, and cannot 
love his son, as all other fathers are blessed in loving 
their sons, and in their sons loving them. Such a 
man feels himself to be a monster among fathers. 
Your son has grown up to manhood in the house of 
an unsanctified and an unprayerful father. And, 
as was prophesied in a thousand scriptures, and 
seen in a thousand of your neighbours’ houses,— 
as a father sows in his son, so shall he reap. You 
took your own way with God, and your son is now 
taking his own way with you. You despised God’s 
counsels, and all that your son has done has been 
to despise yours. “ If I am a father,” you say, 
“ where is mine honour ? ” But God said that 
first, and said it about you. Try the deliverance 
of the text before you absolutely destroy yourself. 
You have done everything a father can do, you say. 
No, you have not sanctified yourself. Try sanctifica¬ 
tion upon God, and upon yourself, and upon your 
son. Die this very day to your proud heart; and 
having begun to die, so die daily. “ O Almighty 
God ! O God of all grace ! Pity a most miserable 
man ! Sanctify me : break me to pieces : melt 
me to tears : do what Thou wilt with me : do all 
that I need to have done : only, if it be possible, 
take this hell out of my heart, and give me back 
my lost love for my child, and his for me!” 

Till your neighbours—instead of loud and angry 
words—will hear the voice of Psalms in the taber- 


OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF 127 


nacles of the righteous : “ For He hath torn, and 
He will heal us ; He hath smitten, and He will 
bind us up.” Sanctify yourself, then, from all the 
remaining dregs of pride, and anger, and temper, 
and tyranny in your heart and life, as also from all 
those appetites that inflame and exasperate all 
these evil things. Sanctify yourself to please God, 
and to pacify conscience, and wait and see what 
God will do to you in His pity and in His love. He 
has no pleasure in the death of the wicked : make 
you, therefore, a new heart, and a new spirit, saith 
the Lord. Sanctify yourself ; and wait and see. 

There is perhaps not one of us come to years, 
who has not some child or some other relation ; 
some old schoolfellow or college friend; some partner 
in business; or some companion in sin, or some one 
else, that we are compelled from time to time to 
pray for, as we see them going down in sickness, or 
in poverty, or in vice, or it may be even in crime. 
Men differ greatly in the tenderness and in the pain 
of their hearts and their consciences in such cases. 
But we all know something, no doubt, of this 
remorse and this horror at the ruin and the misery 
of men we once knew so well. It is many years 
since you have even seen him. You did what you 
could to assist him ; and since then you have tried 
hard to wash your hands of him. But, like the 
cock-crowing, which, as often as Peter again heard 
it anywhere to the end of his life, always called 


128 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


back to his unhappy mind his denial of his Master : 
so there are things that you cannot help hearing, 
that call back your long past to your conscience. 
Your conscience may be very unreasonable and 
very unjust,—but be quiet she will not. “ Thou art 
the man ! but for thee that poor shipwreck might 
to this day have been a happy and a prosperous 
and a good man/’ I cannot tell you the terrible 
shock a case of that kind gave to myself last week. 
There is a man still in this life I had neglected to 
pray for, for a long time past. Days and weeks,— 
and I never once mentioned his name. I used to 
sanctify myself for his sake : but daily self-denial 
is uphill work with me; and I had insensibly slipped 
out of it. But, as God would have it, a letter came 
into my hands last week, that called back my 
present text to my mind. I may not tell you all 
that was in that letter, but the very postmark made 
my heart to stand still. And as I opened the letter 
and read it,—Shall I tell you what I felt ? I felt 
as if I had murdered my old friend. I felt as if he 
had been drowned, while, all the time, I had refused 
to throw him the rope that was in my hand. I felt 
his blood burning like vitriol on my soul. And a 
voice cried after me on the street, and would not be 
silent even in my sleep, “ Thou art the man I ” I 
could get no rest till I had resolved, and had begun 
to sanctify myself again unto importunate prayer 
for his sake. To deny myself, to watch unto prayer, 


OUR LORD—SANCTIFYING HIMSELF 129 


and to take his name, night and day, back to God. 
“ I cannot let Thee go unless Thou dost save that 
man : if he is lost, how can my name be found in 
Thy Book ? ” How I will persevere and succeed, 
in my future sanctification for his sake,—I cannot 
tell. The event alone will tell! At any rate, I 
have preached this sermon this morning out of my 
own heartsore experience, as well as out of this 
great intercessory text. 


9 


XI 


OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN 

" Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. i. 

“ Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethse- 
mane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and 
pray yonder.”— Matt. xxvi. 36. 

Gethsemane can I forget ? 

Or there Thy conflict see, 

Thine agony and bloody sweat,— 

And not remember Thee ? 

“ Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called 
Gethsemane,” says Matthew, who was one of them. 
“ And when they had sung an hymn, they went out 
into the Mount of Olives,” says Mark. “ And He 
came out,” writes Luke, “ and went, as He was 
wont, to the Mount of Olives ; and His disciples 
also followed Him.” And, then, John, who also was 
one of them, has it thus : “ When Jesus had spoken 
these words, He went forth with His disciples over 
the brook Cedron, where was a garden, into the 
which He entered, and His disciples. And Judas 
also, which betrayed Him, knew the place ; for 
Jesus oft times resorted thither with His disciples.” 
Where our version says “ a place called Geth¬ 
semane,” the Vulgate version has " a villa ” : while 

* 3 ° 


OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN 131 


the Rheims version has in Matthew “ a country 
place,” and in Mark “ a farm ”—“ a farm called 
Gethsemane.” Now, there was in Gethsemane a 
garden, and the owner of that garden had given 
our Lord full permission to come and go in that 
garden when and where He pleased. Make yourself 
at home in my garden, said the owner of Geth¬ 
semane to our Lord ; and He did so. “It was His 
wont to go out to that garden,” says one of the 
evangelists. “ He ofttimes resorted thither,” says 
another. 

When he is leading his readers up to all this, 
Luke, with his practised pen, has two verses that 
throw a flood of light on the whole of that Passover 
week, so full of preaching and of prayer. “ And 
in the daytime He was teaching in the temple ; 
and at night He went out, and abode in the mount 
that is called the Mount of Olives. And all the 
people came early in the morning to Him in the 
temple, for to hear Him.” We have some of the 
sermons of that Passover week preserved to this day 
in the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th and 25th of Matthew ; 
and terrible sermons they must have been. They 
are sufficiently terrible to read to this day : and 
what must they have been to hear that week, and 
to hear from the lips of the Lamb ! So terrible was 
His preaching that Passover week that it did more 
than anything else to bring matters to a head, and 
to a last issue, between the preacher and His 


132 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


enemies. If true preaching does not subdue us, it 
is sure to exasperate us. The better the preaching 
is, the more it is either a savour of life or a savour 
of death to him who hears it. “ This was but a 
matter of seven days before He was crucified,’* 
says Dr. Thomas Goodwin, one of the savouriest 
of the Puritan preachers. “ For, Christ when He 
saw that He must die, and that now His time was 
come, He wore His body out : He cared not, as it 
were, what became of Him: He wholly spent 
Himself in preaching all day, and in praying all 
night ” : preaching in the temple those terrible 
parables, and praying in the garden such prayers 
as the 17 th of John, and “ Thy will be done ! ” 
even to a bloody sweat. 

“ And they came to a place which was named 
Gethsemane : and He saith to His disciples, Sit ye 
here, while I shall pray. And He taketh with Him 
Peter and James and John. . . . And He was 
withdrawn from them about a stone’s-cast, and 
kneeled down, and prayed.” Now, if you knew 
to a certainty that your last agony was to come 
upon you this Sabbath night; if all your past sins 
were this very night to find you out, and to be laid 
of God and man upon you—before morning—how 
many of us would you take with you ? Christ took 
His eleven disciples—but He soon saw that they 
were far too many* Till He selected three, and 
said to the rest, “ Tarry ye here.” Who of us, 


OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN 133 


and how many of us would you send for to-night, 
if you knew to a certainty that the wine-cup of the 
wrath of God was to be put into your hands to¬ 
night ? Would you take your minister and your 
elder, and who else to make up the three ? John 
Knox took his wife and said to her, “ Read to me 
that Scripture on which I first cast my anchor.” 
Have you a wife, or a mother, or a brother, or a 
friend who sticketh closer to you than your brother, 
whom you could let come within a stone’s-cast of 
your soul, when your agony was upon you ? No. 
Not one. We should all have to stand back when 
the heaviness and the exceeding sorrow, and the 
amazement and the great agony came, and the 
bloody sweat. 

Down to Gehenna, and up to the throne, 

He travels the fastest, who travels alone. 

“ And He began to be sorrowful, and very heavy,” 
says Matthew. But the second of the four Evan¬ 
gelists, with those wonderful eyes of his, says a still 
more startling thing. “ He began to be sore amazed ” 
is Mark’s inexpressibly striking contribution to this 
awful, this absolutely unfathomable history. Our 
words, our very best words—even the words in 
which the Holy Ghost teaches us—all fail us here. 
The best and the most expressive of our words 
do not come near describing our Lord in anything 
He was, or in anything He did. When our Lord 
“ began to be sore amazed and very heavy,” it was 


134 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


not such a beginning as ours even is. He began: 
that is, He took a deliberate step : He performed 
a deliberate act: He, of His own accord, opened 
the doors of His soul: He poured in on His own 
soul, He let pour, in all the unutterable woe of that 
unutterably woeful night. We set ourselves, with 
all our might, to see and to feel just what it was 
that our Lord both did, and endured, that dreadful 
night: but we give up the effort utterly baffled. 
“ It is too high, and we cannot attain to it.” We 
cannot wade out into all the waves of woe that went 
over His soul that night and that morning. We 
need not try it—for we cannot do it. He trod the 
wine-press alone ; and of the people there was none 
with Him. We should need to be both God and 
man, as He was : we should need to be the Lamb of 
God, as He was : we should need to be “ made sin,” 
as He was—before we could possibly understand in 
what way “ He began to be sorrowful and very 
heavy.” The second Evangelist far surpasses all 
the rest, and he far surpasses himself, in his extra¬ 
ordinarily bold and soul-piercing word—“ He began 
to be sore amazed .” Luther declared that, to him, 
these words of Mark about our Lord were the most 
astonishing words in the whole Bible. And that 
saying of Luther’s is to me a sure measure of the 
greatness and the freshness of the Reformer’s mind 
and heart. Speaking for myself,—I have not come 
on any word in the Bible that has more both in- 


OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN 135 


vited and then utterly baffled me to bottom than 
just this word “ amazed.” I cannot see my Lord’s 
human soul as I here seem to be invited in to see it. 
I cannot picture to my mind His experience at that 
supreme moment. What was it that so “amazed” 
our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane ? What was 
there that could begin to so sore amaze Him to 
whom all things were naked and open ? There 
was nothing that could so sore amaze the Son of 
God, but only one thing. And that one thing was 
sin. It was sin “laid upon Himself” till He was 
“ made sin” Sin is so unspeakably evil, and so 
unspeakably awful in its evil, that it “ sore amazed,” 
and struck down, as to death and hell, the very 
Son of God Himself. He had been “ amazed ” 
enough at sin before now. He had seen sin making 
angels of heaven into devils of hell. And He had 
seen sin making men, made in the image of God, 
to be the prey and the spoil, and the dwelling-places, 
and the companions, of devils. He had seen and 
He had studied all His days the whole malice and 
wickedness of the heart of man. It had been amaze¬ 
ment and horror enough to stand and see deceit 
and envy and pride, and all of that kind, as He 
describes it in terrible words, “ coming out of the 
heart ” of man. But it was a new thing to our 
Lord to have all that poured in upon Himself. To 
be made sin “ amazed ” our Lord ; it absolutely 
overwhelmed Him,—cast Him into an agony 


136 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


it loaded Him and sickened Him, and slew Him, 
down to death and hell. A terror at sin and a 
horror : a terror and a horror at Himself—to abso¬ 
lute stupefaction—took possession of our Lord’s 
soul when He was made sin. The only thing any¬ 
where at all like His amazement and heaviness, 
and exceeding sorrow and anguish, is the amaze¬ 
ment and the heaviness, and exceeding sorrow 
and utter anguish of God's saints ; when, in their 
life of highest holiness and most heavenly service, 
they, at the same time, both see and feel that they 
are still “made of sin,” as Andrewes has it. Their 
utter stupefaction of soul as they see all hell opening 
and pouring up its bottomless wickedness all over their 
soul,—that is to taste something of what is behind 
of the “ amazement ” of Christ. That is to drink of 
His cup : that is to be baptized with His baptism. 
It was sin, and it was sin on and in Himself,—it was 
pure and simple sin that so amazed and agonised 
our Lord. Take away all its terrible wages : take 
away its sure and full discovery and exposure : 
take away its dreadful remorse : take away both 
the first and the second death : take away the day 
of judgment and the fire that is not quenched,—all 
which is the mere froth of the cup,—take away all 
that, and leave pure sin : leave pure, essential, 
unadulterated sin,— what the apostle so master¬ 
fully calls “ the sinfulness of sin.” Conceive that , 
if you have the imagination. Look at that , if your 


OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN 137 


eyes have been sufficiently anointed. Taste that, 
if your tongue is sufficiently tender and strong. 
Carry about that, continually, in a broken, prayerful, 
holy heart—and you, of all men, are within a stone’s- 
east of Christ in the garden : you are too near, 
indeed, for mortal man to endure it long : if you 
remain long there you will need an angel from heaven 
to strengthen you. 

It was not His approaching death. Death and 
all its terrors did not much move, did not much 
disconcert, did not much discompose our Lord. He 
went up to meet His death with a calmness and 
with a peacefulness of mind, with a stateliness and 
with a serenity of soul that confounded the Roman 
centurion, and almost converted the Governor 
himself. No. It was not death : it was sin. It 
was that in which our mother conceived us : it was 
that which we drink up like water. It was that 
which we are full of, from the sole of the foot even 
to the head. It was that which never cost us an 
hour’s sleep. It was that which never caused us— 
it may be—a single moment of pain, or shame, or 
amazement of soul. It was sin. It was hell-fire 
in His soul. It was the coals, and the oil, and the 
rosin, and the juniper, and the turpentine of the fire 
that is not quenched. “ The sorrows of death 
compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon 
me. I found trouble and sorrow.” 

“ We know that the law is spiritual: but I am 


138 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I 
allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but 
what I hate, that do I. ... I find then a law, that, 
when I would do good, evil is present with me. . . . 
Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death ? . . . For the 
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against 
the flesh : and these are contrary the one to the 
other/’ That was not our Lord’s amazement 
and agony: but that is as near our Lord’s 
amazement and agony as any sinner can ever 
come. Are you able to drink of My cup, and to be 
baptized with My baptism ?—Christ says to every 
true disciple of His, as He leads him down into the 
Gethsemane of his sanctification. Till, as his true 
sanctification—so very heavy, so exceeding sorrow¬ 
ful, so sore amazing—goes on, that man of God 
enters into the “ fellowship of the sufferings of 
Christ ”; to a depth of pain and shame and tears 
and blood, that has to be hid away with Christ 
among the wine-presses and the crosses and the 
graves of the garden. For he—this elect soul— 
wrestles not any more with flesh and blood, but 
with principalities, and with powers, and with 
spiritual wickednesses, in the high places of his own 
soul. 

“ Who is this that cometh from Edom, with 
dyed garments from Bozrah ? . . . Wherefore art 
thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like 


OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN 139 


him that treadeth in the wine-fat ? ” The hollow 
of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with 
the angel. But with all that, there is one here 
greater than our father Jacob. Jacob halted on his 
thigh indeed, as he passed over Peniel. But our 
Lord’s sweat with His agony was, as it were, great 
drops of blood falling to the ground. When the 
light of their lanterns shone on the dyed garments of 
the betrayed Man, who came to meet them, the 
Roman soldiers fell back. They had never before 
bound such a prisoner as that. There is no sword- 
stroke that they can see upon Him ; and yet His 
hands and His head and His beard are all full of 
blood. What a coat was that for which the soldiers 
cast their lots ! It was without seam, but,—all 
the nitre and soap they could wash it with,—the 
blood of the garden and of the pillar was so marked 
upon it, that it would not come out of it. What 
became, I wonder, of that “ dyed ” garment ? and 
all that “ red apparel ” ? 

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. 

You all do know this mantle : 1 remember 
The first time Caesar ever put it on; 

'Twas on a summer evening, in his tent, 

That day he overcame the Nervii:— 

Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through : 

See what a rent the envious Casca made : 

Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed ; 

And, as he plucked his cursed steel away, 

Mark, how the blood of Caesar followed it, . . . 

Then burst his mighty heart: 

And, in his mantle mufiling up his face,— 


140 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


Even at the base of Pompey's statue, 

Which all the while ran blood—great Caesar fell. 

O, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! . . . 

Now let it work. 

And as Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, 
he lifted up the seamless robe he knew so well: 
and, spreading it out in all its rents and all its blood- 
spots, he charged his hearers, and said: “ Him ye 
have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified 
and slain. . . . Therefore let all the house of Israel 
know assuredly that God hath made that same 
Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and 
Christ.” 

“ O piteous spectacle ! O noble Csesar! O 
woeful day ! O most bloody sight ! Most noble 
Caesar, we’ll revenge His death! O royal Caesar ! 
Here was a Caesar! When comes such another ? 
Now let it work ! ” 

And, one way it will surely work is this,—to teach 
us to pray, as He prayed. “ And it came to pass, 
that, as He was praying in a certain place,”—most 
probably Gethsemane,—“ when He ceased, one of 
His disciples said unto Him, Lord, teach us to 
pray ! ” 

i. Our blessed Lord had “ a place ” of prayer 
that He was wont to retire to, till even Judas knew 
the place. We should have said that the Son of 
God did not need retirement and seclusion and 
secrecy in order to seek and find His Father. We 
should have said that He did not need our aids, and 


OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN 141 


instruments, and appliances, and means of grace. 
He was always “ in the spirit.” He was always 
collected, and disposed, and heavenly-minded. 
And yet, for reasons of His own, our Lord had 
a closed-in place of His own,—an olive-tree, a 
wine-press, a stone’s-cast out of sight, where He 
sought and found His Father. 

2 . The wrestlers in the ancient lists went and 
practised themselves on the spot where they were 
to-morrow to close with their enemy. They went 
down into the arena alone. They looked around. 
They looked up at the seats where the spectators 
would sit. They looked up at the throne in which 
Caesar would sit. They looked well at the iron door 
at which their enemy would come in. They felt 
their flesh. They exercised their joints. They 
threw, and were thrown, in imagination. And the 
victory was won before the day of their agony 
came. Pray much beside and upon your bed, my 
brethren. You will die, as you hope, in your bed. 
Well, make it, and yourself, ready. “ Forefancy ” 
the last enemy. Have your harness in repair. 
Feel the edge of your sword. Aye; cross the 
Kedron sometimes, and stand beside your fast¬ 
opening grave, and read your name on the cold 
stone. For, 

The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight. 

3 . And our last lesson is this : Non multa , sed 
multum, that is to say, “ One thing is needful.” 


142 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


The cup ! the cup ! the cup ! Our Lord did not 
use many words: but He used His few words 
again and again, till, this cup ! and Thy will !— 
Thy will be done, and this cup—was all His prayer. 
Cato the Censor,—it did not matter what he was 
speaking about in the Senate house, or what bill 
was upon the table—ended every speech of his 
with the same gesture, and with the same defiant 
exclamation ,—Delenda est Carthago ! “ The cup ! ” 

“ The cup! ” “ The cup ! ” cried Christ : first on 

His feet: and then on His knees : and then on His 
face. “ Avenge me of mine adversary ! ” cried the 
widow. “ Avenge me of mine adversary ! Avenge 
me of mine adversary ! ” And, O God ! this day, 
from this day forward, avenge us of ours ! Our one 
and only enemy is sin. Delenda , avenge ! 

Lord, teach us to pray. 

Now let it work ! 


XII 


ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYERS 

“ Lord, teach us to pray."— Luke xi. i. 

“ For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father . . — 

Eph. iii. 14-19. 

If we do not learn to pray, it will not be for want 
of instructions and examples. Look at Abraham, 
taking it upon him to speak unto the Lord for 
Sodom. Look at Isaac, who goes out to meditate 
in the field at the eventide. Look at Jacob, as 
he wrestles until the breaking of the day at the 
Jabbok. Look at Hannah, as she speaks in her 
heart. Look at David, as he prevents now the 
dawning of the day, and now the watches of the 
night, in a hundred psalms. Look at our Lord. 
And then, look at Paul, as great in prayer as he 
is in preaching, or in writing Epistles. No,—if 
you never learn to pray, it will not be for want of 
the clearest instructions, and the most shining 
examples. 

Our Lord's Intercessory Prayer is above us : it 
is beyond us. Of the people there are none with 
our Lord when He prays. There is inexhaustible 
instruction in our Lord's Intercessory Prayer ; but 

M3 


144 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

we must take our examples from men like ourselves. 
After our Lord, there is no nobler sight to be seen 
on earth than Paul on his knees in his prison in 
Rome. All the Apostle’s bonds fall from off 
him as he kneels in prayer for the saints in 
Ephesus, and for all the faithful in Christ Jesus. 
Truly the Apostle has not fainted in his tribula¬ 
tions when he can rise to such intercession and 
adoration as this. “ For this cause I bow my 
knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and 
earth is named.” 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 

Nor iron bars a cage ! 

No,—not when those stone walls and those iron 
bars have an Apostle Paul within them. For, as 
Paul kneels on his prison floor, its dark roof becomes 
a canopy of light: and its walls of iron become 
crystal till Paul sees the whole family in heaven 
and on earth gathered together in one, and all filled 
with the fulness of God. Not Jews and Gentiles 
only, of twain made one new man ; but all created 
things that are in heaven, and that are in earth, 
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or 
dominions, or principalities, or powers. He sees all 
the angels of God in all their endless ministries. 
He sees the Archangels in their mighty dominions. 
He sees the Cherubim shining with knowledge, and 
the Seraphim burning with love. “ Every family,” 


ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYERS 


145 


is Paul’s great and all-embracing word, “ every 
family in heaven and earth.” Paul sees them all; 
he salutes them all : he loves them all : he prays 
for them all. Paul has the heart of a brother toward 
them all. And all that, because his Father is their 
Father; and his God their God; and his Master their 
Master. And as he looks up at them with wonder, 
they look down at him with desire. Much as they 
could tell him, they feel that he could tell them 
far more. They are not ignorant of God : God 
hath not left His heavenly families without a 
witness. Both in their creation and in their con¬ 
firmation; both in their occupations and in their 
wages; both in their worship and in their wars,— 
they all five, and move, and have their being in 
God. But some of their elect and travelled fellows 
have returned, and have told them things that 
have set all their hearts on fire. Gabriel, for one; 
the angel who was sent with strength to the Garden 
of Gethsemane, for another; as also the multitude 
of the heavenly host who praised God and said, 
“ Glory to God in the highest! ’’—all these favoured 
sons of God had it to tell their fellows that not 
the seventh heaven itself, but this lowest earth 
alone, had seen the fulness of the Father’s love. 
And not in envy but in love they “ desire to look 
into these things.” Paul from his prison looks 
up to them, and they from a thousand shining 
walls and towers and battlements and palaces look 


146 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


down at him. And then, both earth and heaven 
simultaneously cease from one another, and look 
at Christ. “ And the number of them was ten 
thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of 
thousands ; saying with a loud voice, Blessing and 
honour and glory and power : Amen ! ” And as 
the angels sang, Paul rose up off his knees, and took 
his pen and wrote this to us: “ For verily He took 
not on Him the nature of angels : but He took on 
Him the seed of Abraham. . . . Wherefore, holy 
brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider 
the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, 
Christ Jesus ” 

Let us then also, my brethren, as often as 
we lift our eyes and look up at the sun and 
the moon and the stars,—at Arcturus, and the 
bands of Orion, and the sweet influences of Pleiades, 
and the Chambers of the South—let us see, inhabit¬ 
ing and holding them all for God, His “ every 
family ” named after Him. Let us often visit in 
faith, and in love, and in imagination, all the 
Father’s families, intellectual and moral and 
spiritual, that people the whole created universe. 
Let us lift up our hands and salute them, and love 
them in God their Maker, and in Jesus Christ their 
Strength, if not also their Redeemer. If they are 
not jealous of us, we need not be jealous of the 
best of them. As yet they far excel us in glory : 
but they would count it all loss to be “ found in 


ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYERS 


147 


Christ not having their own righteousness.” Yes : 
come, all ye shining angels of God, and I will tell 
you what He hath done for my soul! Tell me 
about your God, and I will tell you about my God. 
How has He made you ? And out of what sub¬ 
stance ? And just in what image ? How has He 
spoken and written to you, and in what language 
of Heaven ? In what way has the Logos enlightened 
you ? In what way has the Son, Who is in the 
bosom of the Father, revealed the Father to you ? 
Just in what way do you know what is to be known 
of God ? Is there no kind of sin among you ? 
Did you ever hear about sin ? Do you know what 
it is ? When one of your number is talented, and 
favoured, and employed, and trusted, and loved, 
and brought nearer the throne than another, what 
do you feel to your brother in your hearts ? Do 
your hearts grow richer in love as your ages go on ? 
Or have you ages in Heaven ? Have you days and 
nights and weeks and years in Heaven ? Do you 
never grow old ? Have you no death ? What is 
your occupation ? What are your wages ? What 
is your way of taking rest ? How do you worship ? 
How much do you know about us ? Can you see 
us at your distance ? Has anyone of our race of 
men ever visited your cities ? And what did he 
tell you about himself, and about us ? Oh, all ye 
lofty worlds of life, and light, and obedience, and 
blessedness, we take boldness to salute you in 


148 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


the name of our Father,—in His great Name, after 
which every family in heaven and earth is named ! 

Far more out of the body than in it, the Apostle 
now bows his knees to the Father for that little 
family of saints and faithful in Christ Jesus that 
God has in Ephesus, “ that He would grant them 
to be strengthened with might by His spirit in the 
inner man.” What a sweep of spiritual vision 
from every family in heaven down to the inner 
man of every Ephesian believer ! What wonderful 
flights of spiritual vision Paul took! And with 
what swiftness and sureness of wing ! But, what 
exactly is this that he here prays for with such 
importunity and nobility of mind ? What is the 
“ inner man ” ? And what is the strength of the 
inner man ? An illustration is far better than a 
description. And our Lord Himself—Blessed be 
His Name !—is the best description and illustration 
of spiritual strength in the inner man. “ And the 
child grew,” we read, “ and waxed strong in spirit, 
filled with wisdom, and the Grace of God was upon 
Him.” Was upon Him, and was within Him, till 
He stood up in the fulness of that wisdom and that 
strength, and took the Book, and found the place, 
and said to the men among whom He had been 
brought up, “ This day is this Scripture fulfilled in 
your ears.” And, from that notable day, our Lord's 
whole life was one long and unbroken illustration 
to us of that strength in the inner man that 


ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYERS 


149 


we are now in search of. When He loved His 
enemies : when He did good to them that hated 
Him : when He blessed them that cursed Him : 
when He prayed for them that despitefully used 
Him : when, smitten on the one cheek, He offered 
also the other: when His cloke was taken away, and 
He forbade them not to take His coat also : when 
He gave to him that asked of Him : when He did 
to all men as He would have all men do to Him : 
when He judged not, nor found fault, but forgave 
as much as if He had Himself needed to be for¬ 
given : when He was merciful, even as His Father 
in Heaven is merciful: when He gave, looking not 
to receive again, good measure, pressed down, 
shaken together, and running over into men’s 
bosoms : “ when He was reviled, and reviled not 
again : when He suffered and threatened not . . . 
but His own self bare our sins in His own body on 
the tree ”—that was strength in the inner man. 
Paul, himself, in no small measure, had in himself 
the same inner man and the strength that his 
Master had. “ For this thing I besought the Lord 
thrice, that it might depart from me. And He 
said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee : for 
My strength is made perfect in weakness. . . . 
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, 
in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for 
Christ’s sake : for when I am weak, then am I 
strong.” 


150 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


Now, were some true and Paul-like friend of ours, 
who has power with God, to bow his knees to the 
Father for this same strength to strengthen us in 
our inner man—how would the answer show itself ? 
It would show itself in this way. In that thing in 
which we are now so weak, so easily tempted, so 
easily overtaken, and so easily overthrown—in that 
thing, and at that time, we should then stand firm. 
At what times and in what places in your life do 
you bring shame and pain and defeat and bondage 
on yourselves ? In what are you a burden, and an 
offence, and a hindrance, and a constant cross to 
your families and friends and acquaintances ? Well, 
all that would then come to an end, or, if not all at 
once to an end,—as it would not,—yet all that would 
begin to come to an end. With that strength 
strengthening you in the inner man, you would begin 
to be patient and silent and strong to endure under 
provocation. You would be able to command 
yourself where you were wont to be lashed up into 
a passion. You would begin to look on the things 
of other men. You would enjoy other men’s happi¬ 
ness as, at present, you enjoy your own. You 
would be as grieved to hear an evil report of other 
men as it to-day kills you to be told evil reports 
about yourself. You would rejoice with them that 
do rejoice: and you would weep with them who 
weep. You would suffer long, and you would be 
kind : you would not entertain envy : you would 


ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYERS 


151 


not vaunt yourself: you would not be puffed up : 
you would not behave yourself unseemly: you 
would not seek your own : you would not be easily 
provoked ; you would think no evil: you would not 
rejoice in iniquity, but you would rejoice in the 
truth: you would bear all things, believe all 
things, hope all things, endure all things. In 
all these things, as the outward man perished, 
the inward man would be renewed day by day. 
Brethren, pray for us ! And God forbid that we 
should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray 
for you ! 

But the interceding Apostle contracts and con¬ 
centrates this prayer of his for the Ephesians in a 
very remarkable way. He concentrates and directs 
his prayer on one special kind of strength. Paul is 
as much bent on finding faith in the Ephesians as 
Christ was bent on finding it in Jew and in Gentile, 
and was overjoyed when He found it. “ That 
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” But 
how ?—just in what way does Christ dwell in that 
man’s heart in which faith is strengthened ? Well, 
take an illustration again. How did the still absent 
bridegroom dwell in the heart of the bride in the 
song ? Listen to her heart, and you will see for 
yourself. “By night on my bed I sought him 
whom my soul loveth : I sought him, but I found 
him not. Saw ye him whom my soul loveth ? I 
charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye tell 


152 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


him that I am sick of love. Oh, that thou wert as my 
brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother ! 
I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother's 
house. His left hand should be under my head, 
and his right hand should embrace me. Set me 
as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm : 
for love is strong as death. Many waters cannot 
quench love, neither can the floods drown it." 
That is something of the way Christ dwells in his 
heart who is strengthened by faith. That is the way 
he dwelt in John and Paul and in our own Samuel 
Rutherford. And why not in you and me ? Simply 
because no one has prayed for us, and we have not 
prayed for ourselves, that Christ may dwell in our 
hearts by faith. No prayer,—no faith,—no Christ in 
the heart. Little prayer,—little faith,—little Christ 
in the heart. Increasing prayer,—increasing faith,— 
increasing Christ in the heart. Much prayer,—much 
faith,—much Christ in the heart. Praying always,— 
faith always,—Christ always. “ Hitherto ye have 
asked nothing in My name : ask, and ye shall receive, 
that your joy may be full." 

“ That ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 
may be able to comprehend with all saints what is 
the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 
and to know the love of Christ, which passeth 
knowledge." You cannot construe that. You 
cannot make grammar and logic out of that. You 
cannot make theological science out of that. You 


ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYERS 


153 


cannot shut that up into a confession of faith, or 
contract it into a Church catechism. Paul is a 
mystic. Paul is a poet. Paul is of heart and 
imagination all compact. Paul has science, and he 
has clearness and crispness of intellect of the very 
first order. But he will tell you himself that he 
never in any of his Epistles speaks the words which 
man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost 
teacheth, because they are spiritually discerned. 
“ Rooted and grounded.” I defy you when you 
first try it to make anything of that. I defy you, 
all you can do, to reconcile that. You never saw 
anything like that in all your experience. There 
is nothing created by God, or manufactured by 
man, like that. You never heard before this 
prayer, nor have you ever heard since this prayer, 
of anything that was both rooted and grounded. 
There is no such thing. There is no such thing but 
a saint’s heart. A tree is rooted, and a house is 
grounded : a tree has a root, and a house has a 
foundation : but no house has a root, and no tree 
has a foundation. No houses but holy hearts : no 
trees but the trees of righteousness, the planting of 
the Lord. But here—all you who love to hear of 
wonders and strange tales—here is a house with 
roots, and a tree with foundations ! And all that 
deep down in the divine ground of love. Magni¬ 
ficent man ! A master of men ! A master of the 
inner man of the heart ! Great Paul ! Great 


154 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


original! Great Apostle ! Both Apostle and Poet 
of Jesus Christ! 

“ And to know the love of Christ, which passeth 
knowledge/’ There, again ! What can we make 
of a man like Paul ? You cannot draw out leviathan 
with a hook. Wilt thou play with him as with a 
bird ? Or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens ? 
He maketh the sea to shine after him. One would 
think the deep to be hoary. And yet, do not despair! 
For it is this same leviathan among men who has 
written with his own hand this combined challenge 
and encouragement. “ Where is the wise ? Where 
is the scribe ? Where is the disputer of this world ? 
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men. 
. . . That your faith should not stand in the wisdom 
of men, but in the power of God.” Yes ! I begin 
to see ! It passes knowledge to know it all: but, 
if it were not possible to me to know the love of 
Christ in my own measure, Paul would never mock 
me by such a prayer. All saints, he says, know 
that love well. Then the least saint, and he who 
is not worthy to be called a saint, may have his 
own little knowledge of that love. A saint, indeed, is 
not a saint at all: a true saint is just a great sinner 
seeking to taste the love of Christ. Only “ tell 
me which of them will love Him most ... I suppose 
He to whom He forgave most . . . Thou has rightly 
judged.” 

The truth, my brethren, the blessed truth is 


ONE OF PAUL’S PRAYERS 


155 


this—that instead of it being a difficulty, and a 
hardship, and an offence that the love of Christ 
passeth knowledge,—that is the crowning glory of 
Christ’s love : that is our crowning blessedness. 
The love of Christ has no border: it has no shore: 
it has no bottom. The love of Christ is boundless : 
it is bottomless : it is infinite : it is divine. That it 
passeth knowledge is the greatest thing that ever 
was said, or could be said about it, and Paul was 
raised up of all men to see that and to say it. We 
shall come to the shore, we shall strike the bottom, of 
every other love: but never of the love of Christ! 
No, never ! It passeth now, and it will for ever 
pass, knowledge. You, who have once cast your¬ 
selves into it, and upon it—the great mystic speaks 
of it as if it were at once an ocean and a mountain, 
—you will never come to the length of it, or to the 
breadth of it, or to the depth of it, or to the height 
of it. To all eternity, the love of Christ to you 
will be new. It will fill you full of wonder, and 
expectation, and imagination; full of joy and 
sweetness and satisfaction: and still the half 
will not be known to you. Heap up eternity 
upon eternity, and still the love of Christ to 
you will make all eternity to be but the spring¬ 
time of life to you, and still but the early 
days of your everlasting espousals. The love of 
Christ will, absolutely and everlastingly, pass 
all knowledge. The love of Christ, like the 


156 LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

peace of God, will everlastingly pass all under¬ 
standing. 

“ And, that ye might be filled with all the fulness 
of God.” What that is, and what that will for ever 
be,—“ it is not lawful for a man to utter.” 


XIII 


ONE OF PAUL’S THANKSGIVINGS 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ Giving thanks unto the Father . . —Col. i. 12, 13. 

Thanksgiving is a species of prayer. Thanks¬ 
giving is one species of prayer out of many. Prayer, 
in its whole extent and compass, is a comprehensive 
and compendious name for all kinds of approach 
and all kinds of address to God, and for all kinds 
and all degrees of communion with God. Request, 
petition, supplication; acknowledgment and thanks¬ 
giving ; meditation and contemplation; as, also, 
all our acts and engagements of public, and family, 
and closet worship,—all those things are all so many 
species, so to say, of prayer. Petition is the lowest, 
the most rudimentary and the most elementary 
of all kinds of prayer. And it is because we so 
seldom rise above the rudiments and first principles 
of divine things that we so seldom think, and so 
seldom speak, about prayer in any other sense than 
in that of request and petition and supplication. 
Whereas praise—pure, emancipated, enraptured, 
adoring praise,—is the supremest and the most 

perfect of all kinds of prayer. Thanksgiving is 
r 157 


158 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

higher and purer than petition ; while, again, it is 
lower and less blessed than holy, heavenly, God- 
adoring praise. 

Now it is to thanksgiving that the Apostle 
here invites the Colossian believers. He has 
prayed for them ever since the day on which he first 
heard of their faith and their love. And now, 
that Epaphras has brought him such good news 
of their continuance and their growth in grace, he 
invites them to join with him in this noble thanks¬ 
giving—unto the Father who hath delivered him 
and them from the power of darkness and hath 
translated him and them into the Kingdom of His 
dear Son. 

It is in Paul’s princely manner to establish and 
to illustrate his doctrines, and to enforce and to fix 
Iris counsels, by drawing upon his own experience. 
This is one of Paul’s great ways of writing, and it is 
only a true and a great man who could write about 
himself as Paul constantly writes. Paul is so dead 
in Paul that he can take an argument, and a proof, 
and an illustration, and an apostrophe out of himself 
with as much liberty and detachment as if he had 
lived in the days of Moses or of David. Paul is so 
“ crucified with Christ ” that he can speak about 
himself, on occasion, as if he were speaking about 
some other man altogether. “ I knew a man in 
Christ, above fourteen years ago : whether in the 
body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God 


ONE OF PAUL’S THANKSGIVINGS 159 


knoweth.” Speaking, then, out of this noble 
freedom and self-emancipation, Paul puts himself 
at the head of the Colossians in their thanksgiving 
and says: Come, O ye saints and faithful brethren, 
and join with me in my constant thanksgiving 
to the Father, “ Which hath made us meet to be 
partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: 
Who hath delivered us ”—first me and then you 
—“ from the power of darkness, and hath translated 
us into the kingdom of His dear Son.” “ Us,” he 
says,—you and me. And especially me, that I 
might be a pattern to them which should hereafter 
believe on Him to life everlasting. 

” Darkness ” and “ the power of darkness.” 
Now, what is this darkness ? It is sin, you will 
answer. And so it is. It is sin. It is the dark 
shadow that sin casts on God and on the soul of 
the sinner. This is not what we are wont to call 
“ darkness.” This is not the slow setting, or the 
sudden eclipse, of the sun or the moon. This is not 
the overclouding of the stars. This is not the oil 
failing till our lamps go out. This is not the dark¬ 
ness that terrifies our children. This is not the 
darkness that is scattered by striking a match and 
lighting a candle. No. This “ darkness ” is sin. 
And each man’s own, and only, darkness is from 
his own sin. And each man’s darkness is so thick, 
and so inward, and so abiding, because it is the 
darkness that is cast by that huge idol of darkness, 


160 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


each man’s own sinful self. “ Self,” in this life, is 
just another, and a truer, and a keener, and a more 
homecoming name, for sin. My sin is myself. And 
my darkness lies so thick and so deadly on my 
soul because self towers up so high and so dark in 
my soul. And in every man’s soul! That is the 
reason that the world is so full of all kinds of dark¬ 
ness,—because it is so full of men who are all so full 
of themselves. And that is the reason that hell is 
so full of darkness,—with not one ray of light,—it is 
because it is so full of fallen angels and fallen men 
who are all so full of themselves. That is the reason 
why they gnaw their tongues with pain, and that 
is the reason that the smoke of their torment goes 
up for ever. Yes : believe it! yes : be sure of it ! 
Self is the very valley of the shadow of death. It 
is the land of deserts and pits. It is that land of 
drought through which no man passes. It is that 
land where all men who pass through it stumble 
and are broken upon its dark mountains. Hell is 
hell, because self fills it full, down and out, to all 
its awful bottomlessness. And heaven is heaven, 
because there is no self there. Only God is there : 
only the Father, and the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost, and our neighbour as ourselves. And 
self in Paul, and in the Colossians, was hell begun: 
it was hell and its darkness in them already; 
till the Father gave commandment and delivered 
them from this darkness of sin and self, and 


ONE OF PAUL’S THANKSGIVINGS 161 


translated them into the marvellous light of His 
dear Son. 

Paul is a magnificent writer. We have seen one 
magnificent manner of Paul’s writing already ; and 
there is another in this magnificent passage. But 
both these manners of his are too high, and too 
much his own, for any of us to attain to, or to 
attempt. We must not measure common men 
with the measure of the Apostle Paul. After he 
had been caught up into Paradise, Paul never 
altogether got himself brought back to this earth 
again. His conversation and his correspondence 
ever after that was carried on in “ unspeakable 
words.” His affection, ever after that, was set on 
things above, and not on things on the earth. He 
wrote all his Epistles, after that, less in any 
language that has ever been written on earth than 
in the language they write and speak and sing in 
heaven. His very pen and ink and parchment after 
that, his very grammar and vocabulary, his style, 
—his whole intellectual and moral and spiritual 
manner,—no school on earth ever taught this 
Apostle to write these Epistles. He writes in the 
mood, in the tense, in the idiom, in the atmosphere, 
in the scope, and in the horizon of heaven. Time 
and sin are already no longer with Paul, when he is 
at his best. Paul sits in heavenly places with 
Christ, and he writes to us in words it is not lawful 
for a man to utter. And he is so assured con- 


162 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


cerning not himself only but concerning all the 
chosen and called in Christ Jesus, that he antedates 
his Epistles, and writes in them, as if all the 
Colossians and Ephesians and Thessalonians were 
already where he is. He sometimes redresses the 
balance in a most masterly manner; but his pre¬ 
vailing tone and temper is that of a glorified saint, 
who both sees and experiences what other saints 
still but believe in and hope for. “ The Father 
hath delivered us/’ says Paul ecstatically, where a 
less rapt and a more pedestrian writer would be 
thankful to be able to say: He has begun to deliver 
us, and it is our unceasing prayer that He will 
perfect that which so concerneth us! I do not ask 
you, my brethren, to be thankful like Paul and the 
Colossians, because the Father has actually and for 
ever delivered you from the darkness of selfishness, 
and anger, and envy, and malice, and lovelessness, 
and unbelief, and all disobedience. I dare not ask 
you to be thankful for your deliverance as if it 
were perfected and past. For, if I said you had 
no sin, I should be a liar. And if I said you were 
delivered from all darkness, you would laugh in my 
face and say I was a fool. All I ask is this—Do you 
know what Paul is speaking about ? Do you have 
this darkness of his in yourself ? Is there less of it 
than there once was ? Do you hate the darkness, 
and yourself on account of it ? and do you rejoice 
in the fight and seek it ? Are your dark thoughts 


ONE OF PAUL’S THANKSGIVINGS 163 


about your neighbour your daily burden and 
agonising prayer? Do you, before God, put off 
the deeds and the words and the thoughts of dark¬ 
ness, and put on against them the armour of light ? 
Do you, my brethren, do you ? Then Paul, hearing 
of all that from Epaphras, would write an Epistle 
to you in his most soaring style, till you would 
answer: " Would God, He had indeed so de¬ 
livered me ! ” And he would answer you back 
again, and would say, “ When Christ, Who is our 
life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with 
Him in glory. Put on, therefore, as the elect of 
God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, 
humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; 
forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, 
if any man have a quarrel against any " : and in all 
that the Father will more and more deliver you 
from the power of darkness, and will “ translate 
you into the kingdom of His dear Son.” 

“ He delivered us ” is tame and jejune. “ He 
snatched us,” is Paul’s tingling and heart-thrill¬ 
ing word. He snatched us as the angel snatched 
Lot out of Sodom ! He snatched us as a man 
snatches a brand out of the fire. “ And while 
Lot lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, 
and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the 
hand of his two daughters; the Lord being 
merciful unto him : and they brought him forth, 
and set him without the city.” And like that,— 


164 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


yes, often like that,—when a darkness is again, 
as of Sodom and Gomorrah, filling our hearts, 
God takes our hand, and we are in repentance, 
and in prayer, and in tears, and in love to God 
and man, before we know where we are. “ The 
sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered 
into Zoar.” 

He “ snatched ” us and translated us : literally. 
He emigrated us. Now an emigrant is more than 
a delivered captive. An emigrant, even when you 
emigrate him, goes of his own free will and full 
accord. He chooses to go. He decides to go. He 
prepares to go. He hastens to go. You tell him 
about a better land. You fit him out for it. You 
even pay his passage to it, and buy him his farm in 
it: but all that only makes him the more forward 
to go to it. “ Come ! ” he says to his wife and 
children, “ let us be up and going ! ” And so is 
it with those whom the Father emigrates. They 
have far more hand in their translation and emigra¬ 
tion into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son than they 
had in their snatched deliverance from the power of 
darkness. They love the light now. They love 
to hear about it. They love to walk in it. “ Every 
one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither 
cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be re¬ 
proved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the 
light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that 
they are wrought in God.” 


ONE OF PAUL’S THANKSGIVINGS 165 

And, lastly, in this great thanksgiving : He hath 
“ made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance 
of the saints in light.” 

“ Meet ” is a fine translation, and an exquisitely 
apt and beautiful English expression—as long as 
our minds move only in the literature of the text. 
But when we take the text to heart, it runs through 
our hearts like a two-edged sword. O Paul! up in 
Paradise, be merciful in thy rapture ! Hast thou 
forgotten that thou, also, wast once a wretched 
man ? “ Darkness ” I know. And “ Deliverance 

from the power of darkness ” I am not altogether 
ignorant of. God’s dear Son and His Kingdom, I 
sometimes feel as if I had indeed been “ translated 
into it. But, “ meet for the inheritance of the 
saints in light! ” My heart is dazzled and driven 
back, and driven down within me, with the too 
great glory. I meet for that inheritance! Im¬ 
possible, for I am to this day full of darkness and 
of everything that is wwmeet for such an inheritance ! 
I was saying that to myself, my brethren, over 
this Scripture, when a voice spake to me and said . 
“ What do you say to the thief on the cross ? ” 
At first I did not see what the thief on the cross 
had to do with my hopeless wwmeetness for the 
heavenly inheritance. But, gradually, there arose 
in my mind what the thief asked of the Dying 
Redeemer, and what the Dying Redeemer promised 
the thief. Hanging by his hands and his feet, and 


166 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


filled with the darkness of a lifetime of robbery 
and murder, the near neighbourhood of the Saviour 
for those six hours made such an impression on the 
dying thief that the whole impossible work of the 
text was gathered up, and completed, in that great 
sinner that forenoon. “ Lord, remember me when 
Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.” . . . To-day 
shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.” That thief 
then, who, by his own confession, was only reaping 
on the cross as he had sown all his days—that thief 
was in Paradise before Paul himself : Paul saw 
him, and talked with him: and he must have been 
made as meet for Paradise as Paul himself. In 
those six hours of pain, and shame, and repentance, 
and sight of Christ beside him in His sweetness, and 
meekness, and patience, and pity and prayer for 
His murderers—that forenoon, the Father delivered 
that outcast creature, snatched him from the power 
of darkness and translated him into the Kingdom of 
His dear Son. And, more marvellous still, and past 
all our understanding how it was done, He made 
him meet, and that in a moment, for the inheritance 
of the saints in light. As soon as I saw that, I 
understood the voice that had said to me, “ Go, 
before you preach your sermon, go and stand and 
hear what passes between your Master and the 
penitent thief.” And I came away with new hope 
for all my dying people, and for myself, and for our 
meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light. 


ONE OF PAUL’S THANKSGIVINGS 167 


Have I then, and have you, that dying thief’s 
meetness ? Have our sins found us out to the 
cross ? Has the darkness of death got hold of us ? 
And is our lost life fast running out of us like his 
life’s blood? And, with all that, has there been 
given us a glimpse of Jesus Christ,—Jesus Christ 
in His affability and grace, and such affability and 
grace, and He Himself on the Cross ? Do you see 
and feel anything of all that ? Then, that is the 
Father ! That is the darkness beginning to divide, 
and clear up and scatter. You are on the border of 
the Kingdom of His dear Son. Follow that out, 
speak that out, say, “ Lord, remember me!” Tell 
Him that you are reaping the reward of your deeds 
in all the darkness, and in all the forsakenness, 
and in all the pain, and in all the death that has 
come upon you. 

The dying thief rejoiced to see 
That fountain in his day ; 

And there have I, as vile as he. 

Washed all my sins away. 

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood 
Shall never lose its power 

Till all the ransomed Church of God 
Be saved, to sin no more. 

Tell Him what you would rather die than tell to 
any other. Tell Him that He only knows how un- 
meet you are for anything to be called an inheritance 
of saints. But boldly tell Him also where your 
heart is. Tell Him that your heart is in heaven : 


168 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and testify to Him that even if He casts you into 
hell, to all eternity your heart will be with Him and 
His saints in heaven. And, when you are as near 
death as that thief was, keep on saying : Lord, 
remember me ! Give Him no rest till He says : By 
your much coming you weary Me. And till He 
says : Be it unto thee as thou wilt. To-day shalt 
thou be with Me ! 


XIV 


THE MAN WHO KNOCKED AT 
MIDNIGHT 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”— Luke xi. i. 

“ Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at 
midnight . . —Luke xi. 5-8. 

It is night. It is midnight. The night is dark. 
All the lights are out, and everybody is in bed. 
“ Friend ! lend me three loaves! For a friend of 
mine in his journey is come to me, and I have 
nothing to set before him ! ” He knocks again. 
“ Friend! lend me three loaves! ” He waits 
awhile and then he knocks again. “ Friend, 
friend ! I must have three loaves ! ” “ Trouble 

me not: the door is now shut; I cannot rise and give 
thee ! ” He is dumb, for a time. He stands still. 
He turns to go home. But he cannot go home. 
He dare not go home. He comes back. He 
knocks again. “ Friend ! ” he cries, till the dogs 
bark at him. He puts his ear to the door. There 
is a sound inside, and then the light of a candle 
shines through the hole of the door. The bars of 
the door are drawn back, and he gets not three 
loaves only but as many as he needs. “ And I say 

. 169 


170 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and 
ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto 
you." 

I. Our Lord Himself was often like that im¬ 
portunate poor man, out at midnight, knocking for 
bread. When He was a child, He had lain, full 
of fear, and had heard all that knocking at mid¬ 
night at Joseph’s door. And, when He became a 
man, He remembered that sleepless midnight, and 
spiritualised it and put it into this parable. And 
often, when He was full of all manner of labours, 
and all manner of temptations all day, He called to 
mind that midnight in Nazareth, and knocked again 
and again till He got as much as He needed. There 
are things in the Gospels written there—without 
emotion and without exclamation—at which our 
hearts stand still, when we suddenly come upon 
them. “ He went up into a mountain to pray : 
and when the evening was come He was there 
alone." And, again, “ He departed again into 
a mountain Himself alone." And, again, “ It came 
to pass in those days that He went out into a 
mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer 
to God." He continued all night. Do you see 
Him ? Do you hear Him ? Can you make out 
what He is asking ? He stands up. He kneels 
down. He falls on His face. He knocks at the 
thick darkness. All that night He prays, and 
refuses to faint, till the sun rises, and He descends to 


MAN WHO KNOCKED AT MIDNIGHT 171 


His disciples like a strong man to run a race. And 
in Gethsemane all His past experiences in prayer, 
and all He had ever said to His disciples about 
prayer,—all that came back to His mind till His 
sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling 
to the ground. No,—we have not an high priest 
who cannot be touched with the feeling of our 
infirmities. “ Who in the days of His flesh, when He 
had offered up prayers and supplications with strong 
crying and tears . . . And being made perfect, 
He became the author of eternal salvation unto all 
them that obey Him.” And in nothing more than 
in importunate prayer. 

2. And then, just as He was when He was 
in this world, and just as this importunate 
poor man was, so are we while the day of our 
mercy lasts in this world. A friend of ours— 
so to call him—comes to us in his journey ; and 
we have nothing to set before him. God’s law 
comes and says to us, Do this, and do that to that 
man, pointing him out to us. And we set out to 
do what we are told from God to do: but the thing 
that we would, we do not: while the thing that 
we would not, that we do. A temptation that we 
had not expected, and that we were not prepared 
for, comes upon us. A heart-searching, a heart- 
scorching temptation,—till our hearts are as dark 
as midnight, and as dead as the grave. Duties 
that we cannot perform as we ought, and cannot 


172 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


escape, are laid upon us. Trials to test and to 
sift us ; and crosses to which to nail our hands and 
our feet, till, all day, and every day, and every 
night, like the man in the parable, we have nothing 
to set before them. 

And then, in our famine of life, and peace, and 
strength, we think—oh, so unwillingly !—of God. 
How unwelcome is the thought that He has all that 
we need; and that, if we ask it aright of Him, 
He will give us all we need ! It may be so. But if 
we could make any other shift we would make it. 
We have grace enough left to be ashamed to go to 
God in our need. It is so long since we have been 
at His door, or in His house, or at His table, or He 
at ours. He might very well say to us, I do not 
know you. He might very well say to us, Get some 
of your own friends to help you. We anticipate 
that, and also far worse upbraidings than that. 
And we turn back, we simply cannot go to God. 
But the intolerable pangs go on. The awful faint¬ 
ness and sinking go on : till very death itself, and 
worse than death, is at the door, and till we say like 
the four lepers at the entering in of the gate of 
Samaria : “ Why sit we here until we die ? Now, 
therefore, come and let us fall unto the host of 
the Syrians : if they save us alive, we shall live : 
and if they kill us, we shall but die.” It is not a 
very becoming mind in which to arise and go to our 
Father. But any of you that is a father does not 


MAN WHO KNOCKED AT MIDNIGHT 173 


stand upon points with his son, which was dead, and 
is alive again ; and was lost, and is found. 

3 . When the Books are opened it will be dis¬ 
covered that more importunate and prevailing 
prayer has been offered at midnight than at all the 
other hours of the day and the night taken together. 
Look back at your Bible,—that book of importunate 
and prevailing prayer,—and see ! Jacob is the father 
of all men of importunate prayer. Jacob was 
called no more Jacob, but Israel, because of his 
all-night importunity in prayer. A friend of his, 
his brother Esau, indeed, was to meet him to¬ 
morrow, and Jacob felt that he must have all night 
with God if his life was to be preserved. The sin 
of his youth had found Jacob out. And it took 
Jacob all night to see the sin of his youth as God 
saw it, and as Esau saw it. But he did see it as 
the night went on. And he called the name of 
the place Peniel. What midnights David had with 
sin, and with prayer also, all his Psalms testify. 
But, best of all, David’s Son. The midnight 
mountains and the midnight olive-yards of Galilee 
and Judea will all rise against us when the Books 
are opened,—the Books about our Lord’s life of 
prayer, and the books about our own life of prayer. 
His Books are all closed against that day, but not 
ours yet. If, to-night, then, a friend of yours 
should come to you, and you have nothing to set 
before him: if, in your Saviour’s words, you should 


174 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


come to yourself to-night : and, amid your fear, 
or your want, or whatever form your awakening 
may take, if you hear over you and within you this 
voice saying to you: “ Ask, and it shall be given 
you : seek, and ye shall find : knock, and it shall 
be opened unto you ” : then do it. Do it, as if 
the Books were to be opened before the world is 
awake to-morrow morning. Do it, as if already 
the thief were at your window. Keep your candle 
burning till you read once more the Parable of the 
Friend at Midnight. Go through the parable: and 
go through it on your knees, if not yet on your face. 
Read it; see it. See Himself,—the Son of God,— 
praying in a certain place. Attend to Him as He 
teaches His disciples to pray. See the man at 
midnight. Imitate that man. Act it all alone at 
midnight. Leave nothing of it that you do not 
do over again. See him in his straits. Hear his 
knocks sounding in the silence of the night. Hear 
his loud cry, and cry it after him. He needed 
three loaves. What is your need ? Name it. 
Name it out. Let your own ears hear it. And 
should some ear in the house overhear it, it will 
do them good to hear that sound in your room at 
midnight. Never mind the lateness of the hour : 
think of the untimeous man in the parable : think 
of your untimeous Intercessor, and continue in 
importunate prayer. 

4 . " Importunity,"—" because of his impor- 


MAN WHO KNOCKED AT MIDNIGHT 175 


tunity,”—does not do justice to our Lord’s style,— 
to call it style. What our Lord said was far more 
to the purpose than “ importunity,” excellent as 
that is. What He said was “ shamelessness.” This 
wa$ what our Lord really said : “ I say unto you,” 
He said, “ though he will not rise and give him 
because he is his friend, yet because of his shame¬ 
lessness he will rise and give him as many as he 
needeth.” “ Think shame ! ” the man cried out, 
who was in bed, with his door shut. “ Think 
shame! ” the disturbed neighbours cried out. 
“ Think shame ! ” the late passers-by said. “ Hold 
your peace,” they said, “ and let honest men’s 
doors alone at this time of night.” “ Never mind,” 
says our Lord on the other hand. “ Never you mind 
them : they have bread enough at home : and easy 
for them to cry shame to a starving man. Never 
you mind, knock you on. I have been in your 
place Myself, till they said that I was beside Myself. 
Knock you on : and I will stand beside you till I 
see the door open. He must rise if you go on 
knocking. Give him no rest. Well done ! Knock 
again ! ” Yes,—shamelessness ! “ What a shame¬ 
less wretch I am ! ” you will say about yourself, 
“ to ask such things, to have to ask such things at 
my age : to knock so loud after the way I have 
neglected prayer, and neglected and forgotten the 
Hearer of prayer.” " At my age,”—you will 
number your days and will blush with shame,— 


176 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


“ at my age, and only beginning to pray in any 
earnest ! How many nights have I had no time 
to give to God ! And, now, to expect that when 
I lift up my finger, and go down five minutes on 
my carpeted knees, God Almighty is to hasten and 
set everything aside to hear me ! ” Yes: you are 
right : it needs some forehead: it needs some 
face : it needs, as Christ says, some “ shameless¬ 
ness ” in you and me to come in that manner and 
for these things at midnight. Yes,—it is this that 
so increases and so aggravates the shamelessness 
of your case. The shameful things you have to 
ask for. The disgraceful—the incredible things 
you have to admit and confess. The life you have 
lived. The way you have spent your days and 
nights. And what all that has brought you to. 
It kills you to have to say such things even with 
your door shut. Yes,—but better say all these 
things in closets than have them all proclaimed 
from the housetops of the day of judgment. Knock, 
man ! knock for the love of God ! Knock as they 
knock to get into heaven after the door is shut ! 
Knock, as they knock to get out of hell! 

5. And then,—oh ! what an experience it is, 
what a more than heavenly joy it is, when the door 
is at last opened, and the loaves are handed out ! 
What an indescribable feeling is that in our hearts, 
when, after years of prayer, followed with midnight 
after midnight of importunity and agony, light 



MAN WHO KNOCKED AT MIDNIGHT 177 


begins to break through : and God’s hand is reached 
out, and our souls taste the strength and the sweet¬ 
ness of the Bread from heaven. Jacob does not 
feel his thigh any more. David’s couch, wet with 
his tears, is all answered now. The bloody sweat 
of Gethsemane itself is all forgotten now. 

6 . And, then, just before He shuts up His sermon 
on prayer, our Lord in one word touches the top 
and the perfection of all prayer, — importunate 
prayer, that is, for the Holy Spirit. It is no longer 
a prayer for bread, or for a fish, or for an egg : it 
is no longer for long life, or for riches,. or for the 
fife of our enemies : it is no longer, What shall we 
eat ? or what shall we drink ? or wherewithal shall 
we be clothed ? It is now for the Holy Spirit, and 
for the Holy Spirit alone. Our Lord would fain 
hear us saying at the end of His sermon : “ One 
thing do I desire, and that will I seek after.” We 
have all wrestled at midnight, when we saw Esau 
coming to meet us with his armed men. We have 
all made our couch to swim with tears when our 
sin found us out. We have all fallen on our face 
when death, with his cords and his torches and his 
weapons, was seen crossing the Kedron. But have 
we ever been like this man in the parable for the 
Holy Spirit ? For the Holy Spirit, and for His 
holiness in our hearts ? Do we ever—do we often 
—do we without ceasing knock for holiness ? For 
the death and the destruction of sin in our souls ? 


178 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


For faith in God,—to believe that He is when we 
come to Him ? For love to Jesus Christ ? For 
love to our neighbour ? For love to our false 
friends ? and to our enemies ? For the complete 
cleansing of our hearts of all hatred, and variance, 
and emulation, and wrath, and strife, and envy, 
and such like ? Is there, this morning of God, 
within the walls of this House of God, one man 
who last night knocked and knocked, and returned 
after he was in bed and half asleep, and knocked 
again for more love, for more long-suffering, for 
more gentleness, for more meekness ? For a clean 
heart ? For a heart clean of envy and ill-will ? 
For a heart dead to sin, and to his own besetting 
and indwelling sin ? Is there one ? My brethren, 
God is your witness : for the darkness hideth not 
from Him : but the night shineth before Him as 
the day. “ But, thou, when thou prayest, enter 
into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, 
pray to thy Father, Which seeth in secret; and thy 
Father Which seeth in secret shall reward thee 
openly/’ When the Books are opened—that is to 
say. When your secret place of prayer is opened. 
When your midnight is no longer. When the Holy 
Spirit has finished His midnight work in you. As 
you pray at midnight, in the thick, and dark, and 
lonely, and slothful, and all-men-asleep midnight 
of this evil life, so shall it be answered and fulfilled 
to you in the morning. Only, understand, and be 


MAN WHO KNOCKED AT MIDNIGHT 179 


instructed—not till the morning. Understand this 
well, that you will get earnests and foretastes before 
the morning,—but they will only be earnests and 
foretastes. Submit to this and lay it to heart, 
that the full answer to your best prayer is not given 
in this life. You will get the full answer to all your 
other prayers in this life. Peace with Esau : long 
life, and riches, and the lives of your enemies : 
corn, and wine, and oil: what you shall eat, and 
what you shall drink, and wherewithal you shall 
be clothed. But if your heart is carried on to pray 
for the Holy Spirit, and for the Holy Spirit alone, 
you will have to continue in prayer till the morning. 
Every man in his own order, and in his own time. 
But then,—when the day breaks : 

“ What are these which are arrayed in white 
robes, and whence came they ? . . . They shall 
hunger no more, neither thirst any more. . . . For 
the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne shall 
feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains 
of waters : and God shall wipe away all tears from 
their eyes.” Amen. 



PART III 


SOME ASPECTS OF THE WAY OF PRAYER 









XV 


PRAYER TO THE MOST HIGH 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ They return, but not to the Most High.”—Hos. vii. 16. 

The Most High. The High and Lofty One, That 
inhabiteth eternity, whose Name is Holy. The 
King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the Only Wise 
God. The Blessed and Only Potentate, the King 
of kings, and Lord of lords: Who only hath im¬ 
mortality, dwelling in the light which no man can 
approach unto: Whom no man hath seen, nor can 
see. Great and marvellous are Thy works. Lord 
God Almighty : just and true are Thy ways, Thou 
King of saints. Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, 
and glorify Thy Name ? For Thou only art Holy. 
God is a Spirit: Infinite, Eternal, and Unchange¬ 
able in His Being, Wisdom, Power, Holiness, Justice, 
Goodness and Truth. Lo! these are parts of His 
ways : but how little a portion is heard of Him ! 
But the thunder of His power who can understand ? 
The Most High ! 

Now the greatness of God is the true index and 
measure of the greatness of man. God made man 
in His own image. God made man for Himself, 

183 


184 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and not for any end short of Himself. “ Man's 
chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for 
ever." “ In Thy presence is fulness of joy : at 
Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." 
“ Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God 
my exceeding joy." “ Enter thou into the joy of 
thy Lord." The higher, then, that God is, the 
higher is our everlasting destination to be. The 
more blessed God is, the more blessed are we pur¬ 
posed and predestinated to be. The more sur¬ 
passing all imagination of Prophets and Psalmists 
and Apostles the Divine Nature is,—the more true 
it is that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath 
it entered into the heart of man what God hath 
prepared for them who are for ever to be made 
partakers of the Divine Nature. “ I in them, and 
Thou in Me. And the glory which Thou gavest 
Me, I have given them : that the Love wherewith 
Thou hast loved Me may be in them: and I in 
them." And then, in order to hedge up, and secure, 
all these to their everlasting exaltation and blessed¬ 
ness, God has made it the supreme law of all His 
laws to us, that all men shall, above all things 
else, seek their own chief end. And He has made 
it the sin of sins, the one unpardonable sin, in any 
man, to come short of his chief end—which is the 
full enjoying of God to all eternity. And the 
prophet Hosea has all that in his mind, and in his 
heart, when he utters that great evangelical invita- 


PRAYER TO THE MOST HIGH 185 


tion and encouragement, “ Come and let us return 
unto the Lord.” And he has all that in his mind 
and in his heart also, when he utters the sore 
lamentation and bitter accusation of the text, 
“ They return, but not to the Most High.” 

Now it is necessary to know, and ever to keep 
in mind, that prayer is the all-comprehending name 
that is given to every step in our return to God. 
True prayer, the richest and the ripest prayer, the 
most acceptable and the most prevailing prayer, 
embraces many elements : it is made up of many 
operations of the mind, and many motions of the 
heart. To begin to come to ourselves,—however 
far off we may then discover ourselves to be,—to 
begin to think about ourselves, is already to begin 
to pray. To begin to feel fear, or shame, or re¬ 
morse, or a desire after better things, is to begin 
to pray. To say within ourselves, “ I will arise 
and go to my Father,”—that is to begin to pray. 
To see what we are, and to desire to turn from 
what we are—that also is to pray. In short, every 
such thought about ourselves, and about God, and 
about sin and its wages, and about salvation, its 
price and its preciousness; every foreboding 
thought about death and judgment and heaven 
and hell; every reflection about the blood and 
righteousness of Jesus Christ; and every wish of 
our hearts that we were more like Jesus Christ : 
all our reading of the Word, all our meditation, 


186 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


reflection, contemplation, prostration and adora¬ 
tion ; all faith, all hope, all love ; all that, and all 
of that same kind,—it all comes, with the most 
perfect truth and propriety, under the all-embracing 
name of “ prayer ” ; it all enters into the all- 
absorbing life of prayer. 

Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, 

Uttered or unexpressed : 

The motion of a hidden fire 
That trembles in the breast. 

Prayer is the burden of a sigh. 

The falling of a tear, 

The upward glancing of an eye 
When none but God is near. 

Prayer is the simplest form of speech 
That infant lips can try : 

Prayer the sublimest strains that reach 
The Majesty on High. 

How noble then is prayer ! How incomparably 
noble ! Who would not be a man of prayer ? 
What wise, what sane man, will continue to neglect 
prayer ? “ Ask, and it shall be given you ; that 

your joy may be full.” 

Now, be it understood that neither this text, nor 
this sermon, is addressed to those who do not pray. 
Both the prophet and the preacher have their eye 
this morning on those who not only pray, on occa¬ 
sion, but who also are at pains to perform all those 
other exercises of mind and heart that enter into 
prayer. They read the Word of God : they medi¬ 
tate on what they read : they sing God's praise, at 


PRAYER TO THE MOST HIGH 187 


home and in the sanctuary; and they repent and 
reform their life. What more would this prophet 
have than that ? My brethren, this is what he 
would have : he would have all that done to God. 
The prophets are all full of this very same accusa¬ 
tion, and remonstrance, and protest, that all the 
acts prescribed by the law of God were done : but, 
not being done to God, the most scrupulous, the 
most punctual, the most expensive service was no 
service at all in God’s sight and estimation. " To 
what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices 
unto Me ? saith the Lord. When ye come to 
appear before Me, who hath required this at your 
hands, to tread My courts ? Bring no more vain 
oblations : incense is an abomination unto Me : 
the new moons and Sabbaths I cannot away with: 
it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new 
moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth. 
They are a trouble unto Me : I am weary to bear 
them.” That is the climax, indeed, of all such 
accusations and indignations ; but all the prophets 
are full of the same accusation ; and it is all summed 
up in the short and sharp accusation of the text, 
“ They return, but not to the Most High.” 

But then on the other hand, we are very happy 
in having the other side of this matter most im¬ 
pressively and most instructively set before us in a 
multitude of most precious psalms. And it is this 
indeed that makes the Psalms the mother and the 


188 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


model of all subsequent books of true devotion : 
because we see in them those true and spiritual 
worshippers in Israel returning, and returning to 
the Most High. Take one of those truly returning 
Psalmists, and hear him, and imitate him. “ Against 
Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil 
in Thy sight. Wash me throughly from mine 
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Behold, 
Thou desirest truth in the inward parts : and in 
the hidden part Thou shalt make me to know 
wisdom. Hide Thy face from my sins: and blot 
out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, 
O God : and renew a right spirit within me. Cast 
me not away from Thy presence : and take not Thy 
Holy Spirit from me. The sacrifices of God are a 
broken spirit : a broken and a contrite heart, O 
God, Thou wilt not despise/' That, my brethren, 
is true returning to God. And God meets all such 
returnings, and says, “ Come now and let us reason 
together : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
be as white as snow: though they be red like 
crimson, they shall be as wool." 

Now, while we have all that in the Old Testament, 
for our direction, and for our imitation, and for our 
encouragement, we, New Testament men, are met 
at every step of our return to God with this great 
utterance of our Lord on this whole matter : “No 
man cometh unto the Father but by Me." And, 
no sooner have we heard that,—no sooner do we 


PRAYER TO THE MOST HIGH 189 


believe that,—than every step of our return to the 
Most High from that day takes on a new direction. 
All our religious exercises, public and private, are 
now directed towards Him of whom the Apostle 
says, “ He dwelt among us, and we have heard, we 
have seen with our eyes, we have looked upon, and 
our hands have handled, of the word of life. That 
which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, 
that ye also may have fellowship with us.” Fellow¬ 
ship, that is, in their fellowship with the Word 
made flesh, till he that hath seen and heard the Son, 
has as good as seen and heard the Father; and 
till all our prayers and praises are to be directed, in 
the first place, to the Word made flesh, even as in the 
Old Testament they were directed immediately and 
only to the Most High. But, with all our New Testa¬ 
ment nearness to God; with the Most High, now and 
for ever, in our own nature ; with Jesus Christ, the 
one Mediator between God and man, near to every 
one of us,—are we any better of all that ? When 
we return in prayer and in praise, do we return into 
the very presence of Jesus Christ ? Or are we, 
with all that, as far from Him as the formalists in 
Israel were far from the Most High ? Have we 
taken any real assistance, and any true advantage, 
out of the Incarnation in this matter of prayer ? 
The Incarnation of the Son of God has brought 
many assistances and many advantages to the 
children of men: and one of the greatest and most 


190 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


momentous is this,—that the Most High is now so 
near us : and especially so near us when we pray. 
Now, is that so ? As a matter of experience and 
practice is that so to us ? Do we practise the 
presence of Christ when we pray ? Do we think 
ourselves and imagine ourselves into His presence 
when we stand up to sing, and kneel down to pray ? 
Have we as keen, and as quick, and as intense, and 
as ever-present a sense of His presence as we have 
of the presence of our fellow-worshippers ? When, 
at any time, we kneel in secret, is it no longer secret 
as it once was ; but is the whole place now peopled 
with the presence of Christ ? And, in public worship, 
are we so overshadowed and overawed with His 
presence that all those fellow-worshippers around 
us are, for the time, but so many mere shadows to 

a « 

us ? Is it so ? Is it becoming so ? It will assuredly 
be so when we return to Jesus Christ in our prayers, 
and when He presents us and our returning prayers 
to the Most High. 

Speaking for myself,—I have found this device 
very helpful in my own retumings to my Saviour. 
And I recommend this same device to you. Make 
great use of the Four Gospels in your efforts to 
return to Jesus Christ. Think that you are living 
in Jerusalem. Think that you are one of the 
Twelve. Think that you are one of those amazing 
people who had Him in their streets, and in their 
homes, every day. And fall down before Him as 


PRAYER TO THE MOST HIGH 191 


they did. Speak to Him as they did. Show Him 
your palsies and your leprosies as they did. Follow 
Him about, telling Him about your sons and 
daughters as they did. Tell Him that you have a 
child nigh unto death as they did. Wash His feet 
with your tears, and wipe them with the hair of 
your head, as they did. Work your way through 
the Four Gospels, from end to end : and, all the 
time, with a great exercise of faith, believe that He 
is as much with you as He was with Simon the leper, 
and with the Syro-Phoenician woman, and with Mary 
Magdalene, and with Lazarus who had been four 
days dead, and with the thief on the cross. Read, 
and believe, and pray. Fall at His feet. Look 
up in His face. Put Him in remembrance. Put 
your finger on the very place, and ask Him if that is 
really true. Ask Him if He did and said that. 
Ask Him if you are really to believe that, and are 
safe, in your case also, to act upon that. If you 
are a scholar, say to yourself as the old scholarly 
believers said ,—Dcus ubique est et lotus ubique est 
and set out again to return to God in Christ in the 
strength of that. And, if you are an unlearned 
and an ignorant man, like Peter and John, well, 
like them say,—“ Were not these His words to us 
while He was yet with us,—Lo, I am with you 
alway, even to the end of the world. ” And act 
your faith again, as if it was indeed so. And the 
more pure, and naked, and absolute faith you put 


192 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


in Him, and into your prayer,—the more will He 
take pleasure in you, till He will say to you : “ O 
woman! Woman! I have not found so great 
faith, no, not in all Israel. Be it unto thee and 
unto thy daughter, even as thou wilt ! ” “I came 
to this at last,” says a great Scottish saint,—“ I 
came at last to this, that I would not rise and go 
away till I felt sure I had had an audience. And I 
sometimes felt as sure that I was having an audience 
as if He had been before me in the body.” 

But, before he came to that, he often said,—and 
the saying has become classical in the North of 
Scotland,—lamenting his parched heart he often 
said, “ Surely I have laid my pipe far short of the 
fountain.” And so he had. And so have we. 
No words could describe our case better than the 
text, and that other saying so like the text. For 
we also are always returning ; but not to the Most 
High. We are always laying our pipe, but not 
up to the fountain. We are always engaged in 
the exercises of public and private religion. We 
are not atheists. We are not scoffers. We do not 
forsake the assembling of ourselves together. We 
are glad when it is said to us,—Let us go up to the 
House of the Lord. We enter into His courts with 
thanksgiving, and into His gates with praise. At 
the time appointed, we partake of the Lord's 
Supper; and, again, we bring our children to be 
baptized. We make our vow, and we pay it. 


PRAYER TO THE MOST HIGH 198 


And when at any time we fall into a besetting sin, 
we hasten to repent and to reform our lives. We 
incline our hearts again to keep God's command¬ 
ments. 

But, with all that, this so heart-searching, this so 
soul-exacting text discovers us, and condemns us. 
We return to all that; but we do not return to the 
Most High. We lay our pipe up to divine ordinances, 
—to the most spiritual of divine ordinances : up 
to prayer, and to praise, and to meditation, and to 
Sabbaths and to sacraments : but, all the time, all 
these things are but so many cisterns. All these 
things, taken together, are not the Fountain. God 
is the Fountain. And when we return to God, 
when we lay our pipe up to the true Fountain of 
living waters,—then we taste an immediateness of 
communion, and an inwardness of consolation, and 
a strength of assurance, and a solidity of peace, 
and a fulness of joy, that are known to those only 
who truly return to the Most High. Until we are 
able to say,—and that not out of a great psalm 
only but much more out of a great personal and in¬ 
disputable experience,—“ Whom have I in heaven 
but Thee ? and there is none upon earth that I 
desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart faileth : 
but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion 
for ever." 


^3 


XVI 


THE COSTLINESS OF PRAYER 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search 
for Me with all your heart.”—J er. xxix. 13. 

In his fine book on Benefits, Seneca says that nothing 
is so costly to us as that is which we purchase by 
prayer. When we come on that hard-to-be-under¬ 
stood saying of his for the first time, we set it down 
as another of the well-known paradoxes of the 
Stoics. For He who is far more to us than all the 
Stoics taken together has said to us on the subject 
of prayer,—“ Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, 
and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened 
unto you.” Now what could possibly be cheaper 
than just asking ? And what could cost us less 
than just to knock at God’s door ? And yet, when 
we see such stem and self-denying souls as Dante 
and Teresa setting their seals to Seneca’s startling 
words, that makes us stop and think whether 
there may not be much more in the Stoic’s para¬ 
doxical words about the cost of prayer than lies 
on the surface. And when we do stop and think 
on the whole subject of prayer, and especially 


THE COSTLINESS OF PRAYER 195 


on the costliness of prayer, such things as these 
begin to be impressed upon us. • 

I. To begin with: Our habits of prayer come to 
cost us no little time. We usually divide our day 
of twenty-four hours in this way,—eight hours for 
work; eight hours for meals, and rest, and recrea¬ 
tion; and eight hours for sleep. You will observe 
that it is not said where reading, and meditation, 
and prayer come in. And the reason of that is 
because, with most men, these things do not come 
in at all. But, in revenge, when reading and 
meditation and prayer do once begin to come in 
on a man, they make great inroads both upon his 
hours of work, and his hours of recreation, and 

f 

even upon his hours of sleep. It is not that the 
Hearer of prayer has any need of our hours : He 
has no pleasure in taxing our time, either during 
the day, or during the night. The truth is,—time 
does not enter into His side of this matter at all. 
He has always plenty of time. He inhabits eternity. 
He is always waiting to be gracious. It is we who 
need time to prepare our hearts to seek God. And 
it takes some men a long, and a retired, and an 
uninterrupted time to get their minds and their 
hearts into the true frame for prayer and for the 
presence of God. And it is this that makes the 
night-time so suitable to some men for sacred 
reading, for devout meditation, and for secret 
prayer. Our time is now our own. Our day s 


196 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


work is now done. Our door is now shut. And no 
one will intrude upon us, or will in any way interfere 
with us, at this time of night. Till from such 
experiences as these, as life goes on, we come to 
discover that time, pure time, is as indispensable 
and as important an element in all true prayer as 
is repentance, or faith, or reformation itself. In¬ 
deed, without a liberal allowance of time, no man 
has ever attained to a real life of prayer at all. So 
much is that the case, that Seneca might quite 
safely have descended into particulars, and might 
very well have said that prayer costs so much time 
that, instead of a few stolen moments now and 
then, it takes from some men all that remains of 
their time on this earth. Now that cannot, surely, 
be said to be bought cheaply, which despoils us of 
so much of the most precious thing we possess ; 
and a thing, moreover, which is so fast running 
short with so many of us. 

2. Time and Thought. I do not say that a man 
must bring immense and commanding powers of 
thought to prayer before he can succeed in it. But 
I do say that those who do possess immense and 
commanding powers of thought must bring all 
their powers of thought to bear upon their prayers, 
if they would be accepted and answered. Almighty 
God is infinitely the greatest and grandest subject 
of thought and imagination in all the Universe : 
and yet there is nothing in all the Universe to which 


THE COSTLINESS OF PRAYER 197 


most men give less thought and less imagination 
than to Almighty God. Joseph Butler told Dr. 
Samuel Clarke that the Being and the Nature of 
God had been his incessant study ever since he 
began to think at all. And, further on in life, he 
said that, to his mind, Divinity was, of all our 
studies, the most suitable for a reasonable nature. 
Now, not philosophers, and theologians, and 
moralists like Bishop Butler only, but all God’s 
people, must cultivate Butler’s habits of thought, 
if they have any ambition to please God greatly, 
and to make real progress in the life of prayer. 
Take any man of prayer you like, and you will see 
Butler’s noble habit of mind exhibited and illus¬ 
trated in that man. Take the Psalmists,—what 
wealth of devotional thought there is in the Psalms ! 
Take the 17th of John,—what heights and depths of 
heavenly thought there are in that single chapter ! 
Take Paul’s intercessory prayers for the Ephesians 
and the Colossians,—and what majesty and 
Christological thought is there also I Take 
Augustine and Andrewes, and see how they will 
exercise not your powers of thought only but all 
that is within you. To come back to Paul—that 
man of time and thought in prayer, if ever there 
was one : “ Now unto the King Eternal, Immortal, 
Invisible, the Only Wise God.” And again : “ The 
Blessed and Only Potentate, the King of kings, 
and Lord of lords. Who only hath immortality. 


198 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


dwelling in the light which no man can approach 
unto : Whom no man hath seen, nor can see/' 
What mortal man has powers of thought at all 
equal to such doxologies as these ? No man, no 
angel: no, not the Incarnate Son Himself. And 
what schoolmaster, in Sabbath school, or day 
school, can himself grasp all this answer to his own 
question—“ God is a Spirit, Infinite, Eternal, and 
Unchangeable, in His Being, Wisdom, Power, 
Holiness, Justice, Goodness and Truth ” ? Try 
your own compass and grasp of thought on such 
matters as these ; and say if Seneca was not wholly 
in the right when he said that nothing is so severe 
upon a man’s powers of thought and imagination 
and heart as just to approach God, and to abide for 
a sufficient time before God, in prayer. No wonder 
that we often fall asleep through sheer exhaustion 
of body and mind, when we begin to give something 
like adequate time and thought to meditation, 
adoration, prayer and praise. 

3. But both time and thought are easy, pleasant 
and costless compared with this ,—Thy will be done. 
To say “ Thy will be done,” when we enter our 
Gethsemane,—that throws us on our faces on the 
earth : that brings the blood to our brows. And 
yet at no less cost than that was God’s own Son 
“ heard in that He feared.” When some one, far 
dearer to us than our own souls, is laid down on 
his death-bed, to say " Not my will, but Thine be 


THE COSTLINESS OF PRAYER 199 


done,”—at what a cost is that said in such an hour ! 
What a heart-racking price has to be paid for that 
prayer! And yet, pay that price we must: pour 
out our hearts into that prayer we must, if we are, 
like our Lord, to be made perfect by suffering. 
And not at death-beds only, but at times that are 
worse than death,—times upon which I will not 
trust myself to put words. Times also, when a 
great cloud of disappointment and darkness gathers 
over our life : when some great hope is for ever 
blasted : when some great opportunity and ex¬ 
pectation is for ever gone, and never to return. 
To he down before God’s feet and say, “ Not my 
will, but Thine be done,” at such times—at what 
a cost is that said and done ! And to say it with¬ 
out bitterness, or gloom, or envy, or ill-will at any 
one : and to go on to the end of our lonely and 
desolate life, full of love and service to God and 
man,—at such a sight as that, God says, “ This 
is My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased ! 
Come up hither. Inherit the kingdom prepared for 
thee before the foundation of the world ! ” 

4 . And, then, as to how we have to pay down all 
our transgressions and secret sins before our 
prayers will be heard,—let one speak who has 
gone deeper into that matter than any one else I 
know. “ Now,” she says, " I saw that there would 
be no answer to me till I had entire purity of 
conscience, and no longer regarded any iniquity 


200 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


whatsoever in my heart. I saw that there were 
some secret affections still left in me that were 
spoiling all. I passed nearly twenty years of my 
life on this stormy sea, constantly tossed with the 
tempests of my own heart, and never nearing the 
harbour. I had no sweetness in God, and certainly 
no sweetness in sin. All my tears did not hold me 
back from sin when the opportunity returned; till 
I came to look on my tears as little short of a de¬ 
lusion. And yet they were not a delusion. It was 
the goodness of the Lord to give me such com¬ 
punction, even when it was not, as yet, accom¬ 
panied with complete reformation. But the whole 
root of my evil lay in my not thoroughly avoiding 
all occasions and opportunities of sin. I spent 
eighteen years in that miserable attempt to re¬ 
concile God and my life of sin. Now, out of all 
that, I will say to you,”—she continues,—“ never 
cease from prayer, be your life ever so bad. Prayer 
is the only way to amend your life : and, without 
prayer, it will never be mended. I ought to have 
utterly and thoroughly distrusted, and suspected, 
and detested myself. I sought for help. I some¬ 
times took great pains to get help. But I did not 
understand of how little use all that is unless we 
utterly root out all confidence in ourselves, and 
place our confidence at once, and for ever, and 
absolutely, in God. Those were eighteen most 
miserable years with me.” But we do not need to 


THE COSTLINESS OF PRAYER 201 


go beyond our own Bibles for all that. For we have 
in our own Bibles these well-known words of David : 
“ If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will 
not hear me. But, verily, God hath heard me : He 
hath attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed 
be God which hath not turned away my prayer, 
nor His mercy from me." 

5. And, not to go the length of gross sins, 
either secret, or open, or long-continued, prayer 
when you once take it in dead earnest, and as for 
your immortal soul,—such prayer will cost you all 
your soft, and easy, and slothful, and self-in¬ 
dulgent habits. I will not go on to name any of 
your soft, and easy, and slothful, and self-indulgent 
habits. But you know them yourselves and your 
conscience will not be slow in naming them to you, 
if you will let her speak out. Seneca is always tell¬ 
ing young Lucilius to make up his mind. To make 
up his mind whether he is to be one of God's 
athletes or no. To make up his mind as the athletes 
of the arena do. They make up their mind to deny 
themselves in eating and drinking : in lounging all 
day in the Campus Martius and in soaking them¬ 
selves all night in taverns: and on the day of the 
arena they have their reward. You have the same 
thing in the Epistle to the Hebrews : “ Wherefore, 
seeing we also are compassed about with so great a 
cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, 
and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let 


202 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


us run with patience the race that is set before us.” 
And again in Corinthians : “ Know ye not that 
they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth 
the prize ? And every man that striveth for the 
mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do 
it to obtain a corruptible crown : but we an in¬ 
corruptible. But I keep under my body, and 
bring it into subjection : lest that by any means, 
when I have preached to others, I myself should be 
a castaway.” “ Do I pray,” demands Andrewes 
of himself, “ do I pray—if not seven times a day, 
as David, yet at least three times a day as Daniel ? 
If not, as Solomon, at length, yet shortly, as the 
publican ? If not like Christ, the whole night, at 
least for one hour ? If not on the ground and in 
ashes, at least not in my bed ? If not in sackcloth, 
at least not in purple and fine linen ? If not alto¬ 
gether freed from all other desires, at least freed 
from all immoderate, unclean and unholy desires ? ” 
O true and self-denying saints of God,—shall we 
ever be found worthy to touch so much as your 
shoe-latchet ? 

In short, on this whole subject, and to sum up on 
it,—prayer, in all its exacting costliness, is like 
nothing so much as it is like faith and love. It is 
like Paul's faith, which made him suffer the loss of 
all things, and made him count all his best things 
but as so much dung, that he might win Christ, and 
be found in Him. Prayer is like love also,—that 


THE COSTLINESS OF PRAYER 208 


most vehement and most all-consuming of all the 
passions of the human heart. Prayer is like the 
love of the bride in the song : 41 Set me as a seal 
upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm : for 
love is strong as death : jealousy is cruel as the 
grave : the coals thereof are coals of fire, which 
hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot 
quench love, neither can the floods drown it : if a 
man would give all the substance of his house for 
love, it would utterly be contemned.’* And so it is 
with prayer. And even with all that, the half of 
the price of prayer has not been told. For, after we 
have paid down all that immense price for prayer, 
and for the things that come to us by prayer, the 
things we paid so much for are not to be called our 
own after all. We have still to hold them, and en¬ 
joy them, in a fife of prayer and praise. Even as 
we got those good things by prayer at first, so we 
have to hold them by prayer to the end. It is as 
Samuel Rutherford has it in his rare classic entitled 
Christ Dying. “It is better,’’ says that eminent 
saint, “ to hold your lands by prayer than by your 
own industry, or by conquest, or by inheritance, or 
by right of redemption. Have you wife, child, 
houses, lands, wisdom, honour, learning, parts, 
grace, godliness ? See to it how you got them. 
For, if you got them not by prayer at the first, you 
do not hold them either righteously, or safely, or 
with the true enjoyment of them. See that you 


204 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


get a new charter to them all by continual and 
believing prayer. Hold and enjoy all your pos¬ 
sessions by continual and believing prayer and 
praise/’ 

Stand forth, then, all you who are men of much 
prayer. Stand forth, and say whether or no the 
wise Stoic was right when he said that nothing 
is so costly, so exorbitant, so extortionate, as that 
is which is bought by prayer. While, on the other 
hand, nothing is so truly and everlastingly enriching 
as that is which is gotten and held by prayer, and 
by prayer alone. 

Lord, teach us to pray. Lord ! Lord ! 


XVII 


REVERENCE IN PRAYER 

“ Lord, teach us to pray/'—L uke xi. i. 

* * Offer it now unto thy governor ; will he be pleased with thee 
or accept thy person ? saith the Lord of Hosts.”—M al. i. 8. 

If we were summoned to dine, or to any other 
audience, with our sovereign, with what fear and 
trembling should we prepare ourselves for the 
ordeal! Our fear at the prospect before us would 
take away all our pride, and all our pleasure, in the 
great honour that had come to us. And how careful 
we should be to prepare ourselves, in every possible 
way, for the great day ! We should at once bethink 
ourselves of those men of our acquaintance who had 
been at court, and we should throw ourselves on 
them to tell us everything. How to answer the 
royal command : how to dress : how to drive up to 
the gate : who would meet us : how they would 
know us : all about the entrances, and the stairs, 
and the rooms : all about Her Majesty herself and 
the royal table. And then, when the day and the 
hour came,—our first sight of the Queen, 1 and her 
first sight of us ! And then, our name announced, 

1 This sermon was preached in 1899. 


206 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


till our heart beat as never before. And then 
our seat at the table : and what to say, and what not 
to say. And, at the end of the day, our thankful¬ 
ness that we had been carried through the ordeal 
so well, and without any dreadful mistake. 

Now, all that is, as near as can be, the meaning 
of Malachi in the text. The prophet is protesting 
against the scandalous irreverence, and the open 
profanity, of the people of Israel in their approaches 
to Almighty God. “ Offer it now to thy governor! ” 
he cries to them. “ Will he be pleased with such 
service at thy hands ? Or will he accept thee ? 
A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master 
If then I be a father, where is Mine honour ? And 
if I be a master, where is My fear ? saith the Lord 
of Hosts. I have no pleasure in you, saith the 
Lord of Hosts, neither will I accept an offering at 
your hand.” 

i. Now, to begin with, let us take this pungent 
passage, and apply it to our own public worship, 
to the place where we are now assembled, and to 
the service we are now engaged in. Compare the 
stateliness, the orderliness, the rich beauty, the 
impressive silence, the nobleness, the reverential 
love of the Queen’s palace : compare all that with 
the squalor, the disorder, the absence of all beauty, 
the rude noises, the universal irreverence, I will 
not say of this church, but of so many churches up 
and down the land. And if, in some^ outward 


REVERENCE IN PRAYER 


207 


things, there has been some improvement for some 
time past among us, how do we ourselves stand 
individually, for inward improvement, for our 
personal demeanour of mind and heart in public 
worship ? A Court chaplain, who is at the same 
time a minister of a congregation, says this to his 
congregation, “ When you are in an audience 
with your sovereign, would you have your mind 
taken up all the time with impertinent and utterly 
trifling things ? When you are standing, or kneel¬ 
ing, in the royal presence, would you turn to see 
who is coming in when the door opens ? Would 
you rise and look out to see who is passing the 
window ? Would you stare round the room at the 
servants, and at the furniture, while your sovereign 
is speaking to you, and you to him ? ” And so on. 
No. The thing is inconceivable. No sane man 
could possibly do such a thing. There is a good 
story told at the expense of a certain enterprising 
and unceremonious English journalist, to the effect 
that the Czar returned to his councillors, and said 
that he had just passed through an experience 
that was new to him,—he had been “ dismissed ” 
by a newspaper man as soon as the interview was 
over. Both Malachi, and the Court chaplain, and 
the story about the dismissal of the Czar, have 
lessons for us all about our behaviour in public 
worship. 

And, The worst of it is that all this irreverence, 


208 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


disrespect for the House of God, and, indeed, down¬ 
right profanity, begins where it should be arrested 
and denounced till it becomes impossible. For it 
begins and is perpetuated, of all places, in the pulpit. 
With how little reverence and godly fear do we 
who are ministers enter the pulpit! With plenty 
of fear, if not reverence, of man. Full of the fear 
of man, lest we do not come up to-day to what our 
irreverent people expect of us. How we study 
and prepare to pray, and to preach, setting mortal 
men like you before us ! Were it not that He, 
with Whom we have to do, is, far past all His 
promises, “ long-suffering and slow to wrath " 
towards us ministers, an angry Voice would many 
a Sabbath morning cut short our profane per¬ 
formances with the sentence,—“ O graceless 
minister ! Offer all that to thy governor! " And, 
thus it comes about,—“ Like priest, like people." 
For who, here, of all this multitude of people with 
psalm-books in their hands, really sang this morn¬ 
ing’s psalm to God ? To God ? Who set every¬ 
thing else aside at the church door, because he was 
to have one more audience of the King, Eternal, 
Immortal, Invisible ? Who prayed to God, in the 
opening or in the intercessory prayer, with an 
arrested, entranced and enraptured heart ? No : 
not one. “ Take it to your governor." 

2 . And, beginning with public worship, we take 
all that profanity home with us to our family 


REVERENCE IN PRAYER 


209 


worship. For one thing,—all our family worship 
is made to give place, morning and night, to any¬ 
thing and everything. There are so-called Christ¬ 
ian homes where the sons and the daughters and 
the guests come down to family worship just as they 
please and find it convenient. If they are down in 
time for breakfast, good and well—the kitchen 
arrangements must not be disturbed; but the 
family prayers to God may be observed or not as 
our young gentlemen please. And, as to evening 
prayers,—this actually happened in one of our own 
houses the other night. A new servant-man brought 
in the books, and laid them on the table in the 
crowded drawing-room, at the usual hour. I should 
have said it was the night of a large and late dinner¬ 
party. The poor innocent fellow narrowly escaped 
being sent about his business as soon as the last 
guest had left. “ Do you not know, sir ”—his 
master set upon him—“ that in good society there 
is never family prayers after a party like what we 
have had to-night ? ” The stupid man had just 
come from a devout old castle in the Highlands, 
and did not know that family worship was a fast¬ 
dying-out ceremony in the West End society he 
had come to serve. 

But even when family worship is never,—morn¬ 
ing nor night—pushed into a corner, it might almost 
better be. The regulation chapter; the wooden 
monotony; the mechanical round; the absence 

14 


210 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


of a thought, or an idea, or an emotion, or a feeling ; 
one pushing about a creaking chair when he is on 
his knees : another yawning till the whole room 
is ashamed of the indecency : another coughing 
and sneezing without ceremony : and then,—before 
Amen is well uttered,—all the room beginning to talk 
at once : it had been so bottled up for the past 
ten minutes. I only know one house, in all my 
acquaintance, where ordinary decorum is taught 
to the children and the guests in the matter of a 
moment of reverential silence before the Babel 
begins again after prayer to God. Now, would you 
cough in the Queen’s face ? Would you yawn till 
she heard you ? Would you up, and begin to talk 
to her servants before they are well off their knees ? 
“ Take it now unto thy governor.” 

Very few men are such well-mannered gentlemen 
at home as they are in company. No man dresses 
for his wife and children, as all men so scrupulously 
dress for court and ceremonial. But some select 
men do. They have a queen every evening at 
home, and young princes and princesses at table 
with them. And they have their reward. And so 
in the matter of family prayers. Few men, ministers 
or others, prepare themselves for family prayers as 
they do for State services, and ceremonial devo¬ 
tions. But some men do : and they, too, have 
their reward. Thomas Boston made it a rule to 
prepare himself for family worship, as regularly, 


REVERENCE IN PRAYER 


211 


and as honestly, as for the pulpit or the prayer¬ 
meeting. And he had his remarkable rewards, as 
you will see when you read his remarkable Memoirs 
of himself. An old college friend of mine keeps 
me posted up with the work of grace that always 
goes on in his congregation, and in his family. 
And, not long ago, I had a letter from him telling 
me that God had given him the soul of another of 
his children : and the best of it was that it took 
place at, and sprang out of, the family worship of 
the manse. You and I would be taken aback if 
any one—a child, a servant, a guest—said to us 
that they had ever been any the better of any 
family worship of ours. We do not expect it. We 
do not prepare for it. We do not really wish it. 
And we do not get it. And we never shall. 

But it is perhaps at the breakfast and the dinner 
table that our family mockery of God comes to its 
most perfect performance. This is the way they 
said grace about the year 1720 in England. “ In 
one house you may perhaps see the head of the 
house just pulling off his hat : in another, half 
getting up from his seat : another shall, it may be, 
proceed as far as to make as if he said something, 
but was ashamed of what he said,” and so on. You 
will see the miserable picture finished when you go 
home to-day. And you will see the heartless 
mockery to perfection the first public dinner you 
are at. I suppose this is what Malachi meant 


212 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


when he said, “ Even the Lord’s meat is to you 
contemptible.” 

3. And then, secret prayer, “ closet ” prayer, as 
Christ calls it,—even where there is a certain 
semblance of it,—take it to thy governor ! For are 
not these its characters and features, even where 
it in some measure exists ? Its chanciness, its 
fitfulness, its occasionliness, its shortness, even 
curtness, its hastiness to get it over, and to get 
away from it, and from Him ; and so on. “ Be 
not so hasty,” says the prophet, “ to get out of His 
sight ”; showing, you see, that in secret prayer 
they had the very same impiety and profanity to 
contend with that we have. And, again : “ If the 
spirit of thy ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy 
place.” No : leave not thy place, for His spirit 
rises up against all haste to get rid of Him and all 
dislike at His presence, and all distaste, and all 
restraint of prayer. “ Leave not thy place.” The 
whole world is in that word. Thy soul is in that 
word. Thy salvation, and the salvation of others, 
is in that word to thee, “ Leave not thy place.” 
No ! Leave not thy place. Keep firm on thy knees. 
Go back a second and a third time. Even after 
thou art out of thy door, if the Spirit moves thee : 
and more, if He has forsaken thee and does not 
move thee, go back : shut thy door upon thee 
again: for thy Governor is there waiting for thee, 
and nothing in thee pleases Him like secret prayer. 


REVERENCE IN PRAYER 


218 


And, sometimes, speak out when you are alone with 
Him. You will find it a great assistance to a 
languid faith sometimes to speak out. Cry aloud 
to Him sometimes. You will find a mighty altera¬ 
tion in your heart as you continue, and continue, in 
secret, and in intimate and in confiding prayer. 
Say to yourself that the Governor of heaven and 
earth is shut in with you, and you with Him ; and 
be not in such a hurry to “ dismiss ” Him. 

Now, this Royal command has again gone forth 
among us concerning next Lord’s Day. “ If the 
Lord will, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper will 
be dispensed here.” “ The Mighty God, even the 
Lord, hath spoken. Out of Zion, the perfection 
of beauty, God hath shined. Gather my saints 
together unto Me ; those that have made a 
covenant with Me by sacrifice.” And in obedience 
to His command we shall all be gathering together 
to the Lord’s Table about this hour next Lord’s 
Day. Now, let us just do—all this week—as if 
it were the week before we were to go to Windsor 
or to Balmoral. Let us think all the week about 
our King, and about His Table, and about how 
we should prepare ourselves for His Table; and 
how we should behave ourselves at it. Let us seek 
out those royal favourites who are at home at the 
Lord’s Table, and go by their advice. There are 
books, also, of court etiquette, that are simply 
invaluable to intending communicants,—golden 


214 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


books, in which the ways of heaven are set forth, 
and illustrated, for the counsel and guidance of 
new beginners. Read nothing else all the week. 
Fill your mind with the ways and words and 
manners of the Royal Table. And be ready, with 
the right words to speak, when the King speaks 
to you. And when He comes in to see the guests. 
He will see you with your wedding garment on : 
and He will look on you with His Royal countenance, 
and will say to you, “ Eat, O friends ! drink, yea, 
drink abundantly, O beloved.” And you will call 
the name of this place Peniel: for you will say, 
“ I have seen God face to face, and my life is 
preserved.” 


XVIII 


THE PLEADING NOTE IN PRAYER 

“ Lord, teach us to pray."— Luke xi. i. 

“ Let us plead together."—I sa. xliii. 26. 

We all know quite well what it is to “ plead 
together.” We all plead with one another every 
day. We all understand the exclamation of the 
patriarch Job quite well—“ 0 that one might plead 
for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his 
neighbour.” We have a special order of men among 
ourselves who do nothing else but plead with the 
judge for their neighbours. We call those men by 
the New Testament name of advocates : and a much- 
honoured and a much-sought-after office is the 
office of an advocate. But, what if in this also, 
“ earth be but the shadow of heaven: and things 
therein each to other like, more than on earth is 
thought ” ? 

Prayer, in its most comprehensive sense, embraces 
many states of the mind, and many movements 
and manifestations of the heart. But our use of 
the word prayer this morning will be limited to 
these two elements in all true prayer—petition and 
pleading. 


216 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


Petitioning and pleading are two quite dis¬ 
tinct things. When we make a petition, we 
simply ask that something shall be granted and 
given to us. Whereas when we plead, we show 
reasons why our petition should be granted and 
given. Petitioning is asking : whereas pleading is 
arguing. When a petitioner is in dead earnest, he 
is not content with merely tabling his petition. 
He does not simply state his bare case, and then 
leave it to speak for itself. No. Far from that. 
He at once proceeds to support his case with all 
the reasons and arguments and appeals that he 
can command. His naked petition, he knows quite 
well, is not enough. And thus it is that, like Job, 
he hastens to “ order his cause before God, and to 
fill his mouth with arguments/' 

Now, as was to be expected, we find that Holy 
Scripture is full not only of petitioning but of 
pleading also. Especially the Psalms. Then, 
again, Job is an extraordinary book in many 
respects ; but in nothing is it more extraordinary 
than just in its magnificent speeches of argumenta¬ 
tion and pleading, both with God and with man. 
So much so, that a young advocate could study no 
finer model of the loftiest rhetoric of his great pro¬ 
fession than just the passionate pleadings and 
appeals of which this splendid book is so full. And 
then, most wonderful of all, most instructive, most 
impressive, and most heart-consoling of all, the 


THE PLEADING NOTE IN PRAYER 217 


17th of John is full of this same element of reason¬ 
ing and pleading,—more full of reasoning and 
pleading, remarkable to discover, than even of 
petitioning. Three petitions, or at most four, are 
all that our Lord makes to His Father in that great 
audience of His. And then, all the rest of His time 
and strength, in that great audience, is taken up 
with pleadings and arguments and reasonings and 
appeals,—as to why His four petitions for Himself, 
and for His disciples, should be heard and answered. 

And then, the pleas, so to call them, that are 
employed by the prophets and the psalmists,—and 
much more by our Lord Himself,—are not only 
so many argumentative pleas ; they are absolutely 
a whole, and an extraordinarily rich, theology in 
themselves. The warrants they all build upon; 
the justifications they all put forward ; the reasons 
they all assign why they should be heard and 
answered,—all these things are a fine study in the 
very deepest divinity. The things in God and in 
themselves that all those petitioners put forward ; 
the allegations and pretexts they advance ; the 
refuges they run into; and the grounds they take 
their last stand upon,—the prayers of God’s great 
saints are not only a mine for a divinity student 
to work down to the bottom, but they are an in¬ 
comparable education to every practitioner of the 
advocate’s art. And if they are indisputably all 
that, then much more are those inspired prayers the 


218 LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

I 

very best meditation and ensample to every throne- 
besieging sinner, and to every importuning saint. 
For those great suppliants plead before God, God 
Himself : they plead the Divine Nature and the 
Divine Name : they plead, and put God in remem¬ 
brance of what He can do, and what He cannot 
do : they plead themselves, and their depraved and 
debilitated human nature: and, in their last 
resort, they plead the very greatness of their own 
guilt, and their desert,—if they got their desert,— 
to be for ever cast out of God’s presence. With 
such extraordinary arguments as these do God’s 
saints fill their mouths when they enter in to petition 
and to plead before God. 

Come then, and let us all join ourselves to them. 
Come, and let us learn to pray with them ; and, 
especially, to plead. And, first, let us take the 
case of that man here, who has been a great trans¬ 
gressor. Such a transgressor as he was whose great 
transgressions were the occasion and the oppor¬ 
tunity of our present text. Just see what a power¬ 
ful,—what an all-powerful,—argument God gives 
to this great transgressor in Israel to plead. Just 
listen to the most wonderful words. “ I, even I, 
am He that blotteth out thy trangressions for Mine 
own sake, and will not remember thy sins. Put Me 
in remembrance : let us plead together : declare 
thou, that thou mayest be justified.” 

Let the great transgressor listen to that. Let 


THE PLEADING NOTE IN PRAYER 219 


him lay up that in his heart. Let him plead that 
with all his might, till his transgressions are all 
blotted out. Let him fill his mouth with this 
argument,—this unanswerable argument,—God’s 
own sake. Let every great transgressor, in his 
great extremity, take this very text ; and, when he 
has found this place, let him, on his knees, lay this 
place open before God. Let him be very bold. 
Let him, with all plainness, put God in remembrance 
of this great promise of His. " Look down, and 
see,”—let the great transgressor say with this 
promise open before him and before God,—” look 
down, and see if these are indeed Thine own words 
to such sinners as I am. Or was the prophet 
deceived in thinking that these were the very words 
of the sin-pardoning God ? And has he so deceived 
me ? Hast Thou, O God, in very divine truth, said 
that Thou wilt blot out and wilt not remember 
my sins ? I shall always remember them. They 
shall ever be before me. But, O my God, if ever 
Thou didst blot out, and forget any man’s sins,— 
oh, blot out and forget mine ! ” And then, from 
that, still go on to plead before God the greatness 
of your misery because of your sin. Tell Him that 
your sin and misery are far beyond all telling. 
And ask Him if it is indeed true that He ” delights 
in mercy.” And then, plead those two great 
arguments together,—your misery and His mercy. 
Put Him in remembrance, that if He indeed delights 


220 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


in mercy,—as He says He does,—then He will have 
His fill of delights in you ; for that you are of all 
men most miserable, and most absolutely dependent 
on His great mercy. And as you so pray, and so 
plead, ere ever you are aware, your sinful heart 
will break out into this song with the prophet and 
will say, “ Who is a God like unto Thee, That 
pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by transgression ? 
Thou retainest not Thine anger for ever, because 
Thou delightest in mercy. He will turn again : 
He will have compassion upon us : Thou wilt cast 
all our sins into the depths of the sea/' 

Or, is the sanctification and true holiness of 
your so sinful soul,—is that your special and your 
always most pressing case before God ? Is it the 
positively awful pollution and depravity of your 
heart that casts you, day and night, on your face 
before God and man ? Is this the cry that never 
ceases before God from you : “ Create in me a 
clean heart, O God ” ? Is your inward enslavement 
to sin something you have never seen or heard 
equalled in Holy Scripture, or anywhere else ? Is 
that, indeed, so ? Then,—just say so. You can¬ 
not take into your mouth a better argument with 
God than that. Tell Him : put Him in remem¬ 
brance : search the Scriptures : collect the promises, 
and plead with Him to consider your case, and to 
say if He has ever seen such a sad case as yours,— 
ever since He began to sanctify and to save sinners. 


THE PLEADING NOTE IN PRAYER 221 


And He will surely bow down, and will hear that 
cry of your heart that no mortal man hears : and 
He will wipe off the tears that no mortal hand can 
touch. 

When Zion’s bondage God turned back. 

As men that dreamed were we : 

Then filled with laughter was our mouth 
Our tongue with melody. 

As streams of water in the south 
Our bondage, Lord, recall: 

Who sow in tears, a reaping time 
Of joy enjoy they shall. 

Or, again, are you a father, and is it your son's 
bondage to sin that you are to-day pleading before 
God ? If that is your case, then put Him in 
remembrance that He is a Father also; and that 
He has prodigal sons as well as you. And that He 
has it in His power to make your heart, and your 
house, as glad as His own house, and His own 
heart, are again made glad, as often as any son 
of His which was lost is found, and which was 
dead is alive again. Read the Parable of the 
Prodigal Son, and read nothing else : plead the 
Parable of the Prodigal Son, and plead nothing else, 
—till it is all fulfilled to you, and till you, and your 
house, are all made as merry as heaven itself. 

Or, is it some secret providence of God, some 
secret dispensation, that is as dark as midnight to 
you ? Is it some terrible crook in your lot, that 
will not even out, all you can do ? Is it some cross, 
so heavy that it is absolutely crushing out all faith, 


222 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and all hope, and all love, in your heart ? I have 
already spoken about the Book of Job. Have you 
ever read that book in real earnest ? — that so 
spiritual and experimental book, written with such 
a Divine intention towards such sufferers as you 
are ? You must not charge God foolishly, till you 
have prayed, and pled, your way through that 
wonderful book. For all this time, if you only knew 
it, and would but bow to believe it, God is but 
putting you to school as He put His servant Job,— 
if you would only read the children’s school-books 
and learn the children’s lessons. Nay, not only so, 
but God humbles Himself to plead with you about 
your cross, and about your cup, since you will not 
plead with Him. God puts you “ in remembrance ” 
since you will not so put Him. '‘It is good,”— 
so God pleads with you, and, in order to justify 
Himself before you, He reasons with you and says, 
“ It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his 
youth. For the Lord will not cast off for ever. 
But though He cause grief, yet will He have com¬ 
passion according to the multitude of His mercies.” 
And so on, to the end of that great Divine apology 
that every sufferer should have by heart. And, if 
you had God’s pleading with you by heart, and 
always listened to it, He would surely deal with 
you in your sufferings as He dealt with His own 
Son in His sufferings,—He would either make your 
cup to pass away from you : or else He would send 


THE PLEADING NOTE IN PRAYER 223 


the Holy Ghost to strengthen you. Till you would 
boast over your very worst sufferings, and would 
say, “ Most gladly therefore will I rather glory 
in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest 
upon me. For when I am weak, then am I strong.’’ 

Or, what else is your present case ? Is it old age 
that is fast descending on you, and that will not 
be rolled back ? Is it old age, age and death 
itself, both of which—and before very long—will 
claim you, and carry you off as their prey ? If that 
is your case—just listen to this recorded pleading of 
a fast-ageing saint like yourself. And make his 
successful pleading your own ; if, indeed, you are 
fast getting old, and are not entirely happy about 
it. Plead in this way, for one hour every night : 
and see what your reward will be. These are 
that expert’s very words, literally transcribed. 
“ Having spent the day ”—he said every night— 
“ I give Thee thanks, O Lord. Evening draws 
nigh : make it bright. For as day has its even¬ 
ing, so has life : the evening of life is old age, 
and old age is fast overtaking me : make it bright. 
Cast me not off in the time of old age: forsake me 
not when my strength faileth me. Even to old 
age, be Thou He : and even to hoar hairs do Thou 
carry me. Abide with me, Lord, for it is toward 
evening, and the day of this toilful life is now far 
spent. The day is fled and gone : life too is fast 
going, this lifeless life. Night cometh : and then 



224 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


cometh death, the deathless death. Let the fast¬ 
coming close of my life be believing, acceptable, 
sinless, fearless ; and, if it please Thee, painless. 
And let me outstrip the night, doing, with all my 
might, some good work. For near is Judgment. 
Oh, give me a good and acceptable plea to plead in 
that day, O God ! ” And if your heart still trembles 
at the thought of the cold and lonely grave, go on 
to plead this: " What profit is there in my blood 
when I go down to the pit ? Shall the dust praise 
Thee ? Shall it declare Thy truth ? For in death 
there is no remembrance of Thee : in the grave 
who shall give Thee thanks ? Wilt Thou shew 
wonders to the dead ? Shall the dead arise and 
praise Thee ? The living, the living, he shall praise 
Thee.” Till, to scatter your ungodly doubts and 
fears, He will take pity and will Himself plead 
with you, and will say to you, and will put you in 
remembrance : “ Hast thou not known ? hast thou 
not heard, that God giveth power to the faint; and 
to them that have no might He increaseth strength ? 
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the 
young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait 
upon the Lord shall renew their strength : they shall 
mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run, and 
not be weary ; and they shall walk, and not faint.” 
And, as if an Old Testament prophet were not 
enough for your comfort, He will send you a New 
Testament apostle to testify and to plead with you, 


THE PLEADING NOTE IN PRAYER 225 


and to say : “For this cause we faint not : but 
though our outward man perish, yet the inward 
man is renewed day by day. While we look not at 
the things which are seen, but at the things which 
are not seen : for the things which are seen are 
temporal; but the things which are not seen are 
eternal.” 

And so on, and so on. Through all your life, 
and in all its estates. Only, oh learn to pray, and 
to plead. Study to pray. Study to plead. Give 
yourself to prayer. Pray without ceasing. Take 
lessons in prayer, and in pleading. Be ambitious 
to become, yourselves, experts and even real auth¬ 
orities in prayer. It is a noble ambition. It is the 
noblest of all the ambitions—especially you, who 
are advocates and pleaders already. You have an 
immense start and advantage over ordinary men 
in this matter of prayer. And, especially, in this 
matter of pleading in prayer. It should be far 
easier for the Holy Ghost to teach our advocates to 
pray than to teach this heavenly art and office to 
any other manner of man. For every true advocate 
studies, down to the bottom, every case you put 
into his hands to plead. And much more will he 
study, till he has mastered, his own case before God. 
Every true advocate absolutely ransacks the records 
of the Court also for all former cases in any way 
similar to this case he has in hand. He puts the 
judge in remembrance of his own past opinions, 



226 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and of all his predecessors’ past opinions and past 
judgments. Not only so, but a skilful advocate will 
study the very temperament and mood of mind 
at the time; the age; and the very partialities and 
prejudices of the judge,—so set is every adroit 
advocate on carrying his case. Altogether, you 
cannot but see what an advantage an advocate 
has, when once he becomes a man of prayer. 

But, instead of any advantage and start in 
prayer, like that, you may well have this despera¬ 
tion and hopelessness in your case, that you posi¬ 
tively hate to pray, or even to hear about prayer. 
It is not only that you have had no experience in 
prayer : you would never so much as bow your 
knee if it were not for one thing before you,—that 
without prayer you cannot escape. Well, awful 
as your case is, it is not absolutely hopeless. God 
is such, and He has made such provision for you, 
that even you may yet become a man of prayer; 
aye, and, what is more, an advocate for other men. 
Go to Him just as you are. Make your dreadful 
case your great argument with Him. Say this to 
Him; say: “ Lord, teach this reprobate now 
before Thee to pray. Teach this castaway, if it be 
possible, to pray ! Lord, soften this stone to pray ! ” 
Tell Him the truth, and the whole truth. Tell Him, 
on your knees, how you hate to come to your knees. 
Tell Him that you never spent a penny upon a help 
to pray. Tell Him, honestly, that, if it were not 


THE PLEADING NOTE IN PRAYER 227 

for hell-fire, all the books and all the sermons in 
the world would never have brought you to His 
footstool. And what will He do ? Will He cast 
you away with contempt and indignation, as He 
well might, from His presence ? No ! But He will 
do this. He will do as all the humane crowns on 
earth do. When an accused man is so poor, and so 
friendless, that he cannot pay for a pleader, he is 
supplied with one of the best pleaders for nothing. 
And so will the Crown of heaven do with you. So 
God has already done with you, and for you. For, 
you and we,—we all,—have an Advocate with the 
Father. It is Christ that died ; yea, rather, that is 
risen again : who also maketh intercession for us. 
“ And this Man, because He continueth ever, hath an 
unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore He is able 
to save them to the uttermost that come unto God 
by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession 
for them.” 

He Who, for men, their Surety stood, 

And poured on earth His precious blood. 

Pursues in heaven His mighty plan. 

The Saviour and the Friend of man. 

With boldness, therefore, at the throne. 

Let us make all our sorrows known; 

And ask the aids of heavenly power 
To help us in the evil hour. 


XIX 


CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER 

“ Lord, teach us to pray."—L uke xi. i. 

“ When thou hast shut thy door."—M att. vi. 6. 

We shut our door when we wish to be alone. We 
shut our door when we have some special work to 
do that must to-day be done, some piece of work 
that has been far too long put off and postponed. 
“ I must have some time to myself to-day/' we 
say to our household. “ Tell those who ask for me 
to-day that I am so occupied that my time is not 
my own. Tell them to leave their message, or to 
write to me. Tell them that I hope to be free, and 
at their service, any time to-morrow/' We are 
deep in our accounts ; or our every thought is 
drunk up in some business so serious that we cannot 
think of anything else. We have put off and put 
off that imperative duty,—that so distressing 
entanglement,—till we can put it off not one hour 
longer. And then it is that we shut our door, and 
turn the key, and lock ourselves in and all other 
men and all other matters out, till this pressing 
matter, this importunate business, is finished and 
off our hands. 


238 


CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER 229 


And then, as soon as it is finished and off our 
hands, we rise up and open our door. Our hands 
are free now. Our heart is lightened, and we are 
the best of company for the rest of the day. 

Nothing could be plainer, and more impressive, 
than our Lord’s words to us in the text. Just as 
you do every day,—He says to us,—in your house¬ 
hold and business life, so do, exactly, in your 
religious life. Fix on times; set apart times. He 
does not say how often, or how long. He leaves 
all that to each man to find out for himself; only 
He says, When you have, and as often as you have, 
real business on hand with heaven; when the 
concerns of another fife and another world are 
pressing you hard ; when neglect and postpone¬ 
ment will do no longer ; then, set about the things 
of God in a serious, resolved, instant, business-like 
way. “ Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy 
closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to 
thy Father which is in secret.” 

Our Lord does not mean that our Father is not 
in the synagogue, or even in the comers of the 
streets where the hypocrites of His day were wont 
to pray—much less that He is not present with 
us when our families meet together morning and 
evening for prayer. There is no family altar, and 
no prayer-meeting, and no church, and no street 
corner even, where God is not to be found of them 
that diligently seek Him. But God is present to 


230 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


His children in a special and in a peculiar way when 
they enter their closet and shut their door. The 
shortest, the surest, the safest way to seek God is 
to seek Him “ in secret.” It is not that God is 
any more really in secret than He is in public : 
but we are. God is wherever we are. And God 
is whatever we are, in street, in synagogue, at the 
family altar, in the closet. It is not that God is 
one thing on one side of a door of wood, and another 
thing on the other side of that door : it is that we 
differ so much according to which side of that door 
we are on. We all feel it the instant we turn the 
key, and go to our knees. In that instant we are 
already new creatures. We feel that this is our 
proper, and true, and best place. We say, “ This 
is the house of God : this is the gate of heaven.” 
And if you keep the door shut, and give things time 
to work, very soon your Father and you will be the 
whole world to one another. And if you pursue 
that; if you lay out your life to be a man of prayer; 
you will make continual discoveries of practices 
and expedients of secret devotion, such as will 
carry you up to heights of heavenly-mindedness 
that, at one time, would have been neither believable 
by you, nor desirable to you. You will find out 
ways that will suit you, and that could not suit 
anyone else—ways of impressing your own heart 
with the Being, the Greatness, the Grandeur, the 
Grace, the Condescension, the Nearness, and then 


CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER 231 


the Inwardness of God. Your imagination, when 
you are on your secret knees, will sweep through 
heaven and earth ; not so much seeking God as 
seeing Him and finding Him in all His works. You 
will drop down Bible history from Adam to yourself, 
seeing God’s shining footsteps all down the way. 
You will see Jesus Christ also ; and will speak with 
Him with an intimacy and a confidence and an 
experience not second to the intimacy and the con¬ 
fidence and the experience of the disciples them¬ 
selves. You will positively people your place of 
prayer with Jesus Christ and with His Father : 
and out of your place of prayer you will people 
your whole life, public and private, in a way, and 
to a degree, that would make your nearest friend 
to think that you had gone beside yourself, if you 
began to tell Him what God has done for your soul. 

If we were to go over our accounts, and to arrange 
our disordered papers, and to write our most private 
letters in as short time as we give to our secret 
devotions, we should not need to shut our door. 
But our affairs are in such disorder, and in such 
arrears, that we must allot some time to set them 
right. And our Lord assumes in the text that the 
accounts and the correspondence connected with 
our religious life will need some time, and will take 
some trouble. We do not need to go farther than 
our own consciences for the proof of that. There 
is perhaps no man in this house who would not be 


232 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


put to shame if it were told what time in the day, 
or in the week, he gives to secret and inward prayer. 
Godly men go no further than their own closets 
for the proof of their depravity, and misery, and 
stupidity. Their restraint of secret prayer; their 
distaste for secret prayer and a shut door ; and, 
with that, their treatment of their Maker, of their 
children, of their best friends, and of their own 
souls,—all horrify them when they come to them¬ 
selves, and think of themselves in this matter of 
secret prayer. 

And, even after we have taken all that to heart, 
and have begun to shut our door, we do not keep 
it long enough shut. It is quite true that secret 
prayer is the most purely spiritual of all human 
employments. That is quite true. Secret prayer 
is the last thing to be shut up to places, and bound 
down to times. At the same time we men, as 
Butler says, are what we are. And it is just the 
extreme spirituality of secret prayer that makes 
time, as well as seclusion, absolutely indispensable 
for its proper performance and for its full fruit. 
If we rush through a few verses of a familiar psalm, 
or a few petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, and then 
up and out of our door as we should not be allowed 
to do in the presence-chamber of our sovereign, 
then we had as well,—nay, we had better,—not have 
gone to our knees at all. But if we enter our closet 
with half the fear, with half the wonder and awe. 


CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER 233 


with half the anxiety to be recognised and addressed 
with which we would enter the palace of a prince 
on earth, then, so willing is God to be approached 
that He will immediately meet with us and will 
bless us. Hurry, then, in our secret devotions, is 
impossible. If you are in such a desperate hurry, 
go and do the thing that so hurries you, and God 
will wait. He is in no hurry. He will tarry your 
leisure. No ! Let there be no hurry here. God is 
God; and man is man. Let all men, then, take time 
and thought when they would appear before God. 

And then, it sometimes takes a long time even 
to get the door shut, and to get the key to turn 
in the rusty lock. Last week 1 I became very 
miserable as I saw my time slipping away, and my 
vow not performed. I therefore one afternoon 
stole into my coat and hat, and took my staff, and 
slipped out of the house in secret. For two hours, 
for an hour and three-quarters, I walked alone and 
prayed : but pray as I would, I got not one step 
nearer God all these seven or eight cold miles. My 
guilty conscience mocked me to my face, and said 
to me : Is it any wonder that God has cast off a 
minister and a father like thee ? For two hours 
I struggled on, forsaken of God, and met neither 
God nor man all that chill afternoon. When, at 
last, standing still, and looking at Schiehallion 
clothed in white from top to bottom, this of David 

1 Preached after a holiday at Bonskeid. 


234 LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

shot up into my heart: “ Wash me, and I shall be 
whiter than snow ! ” In a moment I was with 
God. Or, rather, God, as I believe, was with me. 
Till I walked home under the rising moon with my 
head waters and with my heart in a flame of prayer ; 
naming and describing, first my own children to 
God, and then yours. Two hours is a long time 
to steal away from one’s books and companions to 
swing one’s walking-stick, and to utter unavailing 
ejaculations to one’s self in a wintry glen : but 
then, my two hours look to me now—as they tasted 
to me then—the best strength and the best sweet¬ 
ness of all my Christmas holiday. 

And then, when secret, mental, and long- 
accumulated intercession is once begun, it is like 
the letting out of waters,—there is no end to it. 
Why, my children almost made me forget you and 
your children. And then, our friends ! how bad - 
we all are to our friends ! how short-sighted, how 
cruel, how thoughtless, how inconsiderate! We 
send them gifts. Our children cover their Christmas 
tree with Christmas presents to our friends. Our 
friends cost us a great deal of thought and trouble 
and money, from time to time. We send them 
sheaves of cards with all manner of affectionate 
devices and verses. We take time and we write 
our old friends, at home and abroad, letters full of 
news and of affection on Christmas Day and on 
New Year’s Day. But we never pray for them ! 


CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER 235 


Or, at best, we pray for them in a moment of time, 
and in a great hurry. Why do we do everything 
for our friends but the best thing ? How few of 
us shut our door during all the leisure of the last 
fortnight, and deliberately, and particularly, and 
with discrimination, and with importunity prayed 
for our dearest and best friends ! We discriminated 
in our purchases for our friends, lest we should 
slight or offend our friends : but not in our prayers. 
Who in the family, who in the congregation, who 
in the city, who abroad, will be surprised with some 
blessing this year ? Surprised—with some unex¬ 
pected providence, some despaired-of deliverance, 
some cross lifted off, or left and richly blessed, some 
thorn taken out of their flesh, some salvation they 
had not themselves had faith to ask for ? And all 
because we asked, and importuned, and “ shut our 
door ” upon God and ourselves in their behalf. A 
friend of any kind, and to any extent and degree, 
is something to have in this cold and lonely world. 
But to have a friend who has the ear of God, and 
who fills God’s ear from time to time with our name 
and our case,—Oh, where shall I find such a friend ? 
Oh, who shall find such a friend henceforth in me ? 

When a minister, going out for a long walk, takes 
his sick-list in his pocket; or his visiting-book; or 
his long roll of young communicants, no longer 
young ; or when an elder or a deacon thinks of the 
people of his district; or a Sabbath school teacher 


236 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


his class, and the fathers and mothers of his class ; 
or a mistress her servants ; or a father his children ; 
or a friend his friends ; or an enemy his enemies ;— 
many a knock will come to his door before he is 
done : many a mile will he have walked before he is 
done. Our Lord took all night up in a mountain 
over the names of His twelve disciples. And since 
the day of His ascension nearly nineteen hundred 
years ago He has been in continual intercession in 
heaven for all those who have been in intercession 
for themselves and for other men on earth. Day 
and night,—He slumbers not nor sleeps : keeping 
Israel by His unceasing, particular, discriminating, 
importunate intercession. 

Secret prayer is such an essentially spiritual duty 
that the Bible nowhere lays down laws and rules 
either as to times or as to places for such prayer. 
The Bible treats us as men, and not as children 
The Bible is at pains to tell us how this saint of God 
did in his day ; and then, that other saint in his 
day and in his circumstances : how Abraham did, 
and Jacob, and David, and Daniel, and Jesus Christ, 
and His disciples and apostles. The Bible is bold 
to open the shut door of all these secret saints of 
God, and to let us see them and hear them on their 
knees. Abraham for Sodom : Jacob at the Jabbok : 
Daniel with his open window : Jesus on the moun¬ 
tain all night, and in the garden at midnight : Peter 
on the housetop : and Paul, in the prison and in 


CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER 237 


the workshop, for his hearers and for his readers. 
And then, we are left free to choose our own times 
and places,—few or many, open or secret, vocal 
or mental, just as we need, just as we like, and just 
as suits us. Only,—surely nature itself, common 
sense itself, old habit from childhood itself, must 
teach and constrain us to keep our door shut for a 
moment or two in the morning : a moment or two 
alone and apart with Him Who is about our path 
and about our bed. And if we once taste the 
strength, and the liberty, and the courage, and the 
light of God’s countenance that always streams 
down on him who is found of God on his secret 
knees early in the morning, then that will be a 
sweet and a happy day that does not send us back 
to our knees more than once before it is over. 

And then at night,—what an indecency it is, 
what folly! How we shall gnash our teeth at 
ourselves one day to remember how a dinner¬ 
party, or music in our neighbour’s house or in our 
own ; a friend in at supper ; a late talk ; a story¬ 
book to finish before we sleep ;—how such things 
as these should have been let rob us of our nightly 
self-examination, of nightly washing from the 
past day’s sin, and of our nightly renewed peace 
with God ! What do the angels and the saints 
think of our folly ? If our fathers and mothers are 
let look down to see what their children are doing,— 
would anything darken heaven to them like seeing 


238 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


the things that serve their children for an excuse 
to go to sleep without self-examination, con¬ 
fession of sin, and prayer ? Whether they see us or 
no, there is One who says over us many a graceless 
and prayerless night : “ Oh ! if thou hadst known! 
even thou in this thy day ! ” Let us begin this 
very Sabbath night. Let us shut our door to¬ 
night. We are in no hurry of business or of 
pleasure to-night. Let us go back upon the morn¬ 
ing, upon the forenoon, upon the whole day, upon 
the week, upon the year. Let us recollect for whom, 
and for what, we prayed in secret this morning,— 
or did not pray. Let us recall what we read, what 
we heard, and with what feelings : with whom we 
conversed, and about what : all the things that 
tried us, tempted us, vexed us, or helped, comforted, 
and strengthened us. Let us do that to-night, 
and we shall not want matter for repentance and 
prayer to-night : nor for prayer, and purpose, and 
a plan of life for to-morrow. ‘'You are not to 
content yourself,” says a Queen’s Physician to us 
concerning the soul, “ you are not to content your¬ 
self with a hasty general review of the day, but you 
must enter upon it with deliberation. Begin with 
the first action of the day ; and proceed, step by 
step ; and let no time, place, or action be over¬ 
looked. An examination,” this expert says, “ so 
managed, will, in a little time, make you as different 
from yourself as a wise man is different from an 


CONCENTRATION IN PRAYER 


239 


idiot. It will give you such a newness of mind, 
such a spirit of wisdom, and such a desire of per¬ 
fection, as you were an entire stranger to before.” 

“ And thy Father, Which seeth in secret, shall 
reward thee openly.” There is nothing that more 
humiliates us ; there is nothing that more makes us 
blush for shame than the way our Lord sometimes 
speaks about rewarding us for what we do. His 
words about our wages and our rewards shock us 
and pain us exceedingly. We know well,—we shall 
never forget,—that, after we have done all, we are 
still the most unprofitable of servants, and the most 
deep of debtors. At the same time,—there it 
stands : “ Thy Father shall reward thee openly.” 
Where ? When ? How shall He reward us openly ? 
Perhaps in our children,—perhaps in our children’s 
salvation; their eternal salvation, to which they 
might never have attained but for our secret, unceas¬ 
ing, mental prayer. That would be a reward we 
could not refuse ! Nor feel any humiliation for, other 
than a most sweet and everlasting humiliation ! On 
the other hand,;what would a kingdom be to us if 
anything^had gone wrong with our children ? What 
would heaven itself be to us, if our children were 
not there with us ? And what a reward, what 
wages, if they are all there ! 

Or perhaps this may be it,—that when all shut 
doors are opened, and all secrets told out, we may 
be let see what we owe to one another’s interces- 


240 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


sions. It may be part of the first joyful surprise 
of heaven to see what we did for other men and 
what they did for us. “ Pray for them that despite- 
fully use you,” our Lord advises us. Well, what 
a surprise it will be to you and to him if some one 
is brought up and introduced to you whose secret 
prayers for you have been your salvation all the 
time you were thinking he was your enemy, as you 
were his. 

But who shall tell all that is in our Lord’s mind 
and intention when He says : “ Thy Father which 
seeth in secret shall reward thee openly ” ? And 
when He goes on to say, “For there is nothing 
covered, that shall not be revealed : neither hid, 
that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever 
ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the 
light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear 
in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.” 


XX 


IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 

" Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ Full of eyes.”—R ev. iv. 8. 

I never see, or hear, or speak, or write the word 
“ imagination ” without being arrested and recalled 
to what Pascal and Butler and Edwards have all 
said, with such power and with such passion, on the 
subject of imagination. Pascal—himself all com¬ 
pact of imagination as he is—Pascal sets forth 
again and again a tremendous indictment against 
the “ deceits ” and “ deceptions ” of the imagina¬ 
tion. Butler also, in few but always weighty words, 
stigmatises the imagination as “ that forward and 
delusive faculty.” While Jonathan Edwards, in 
his own masterful way, would almost seem to have 
given the death-blow to the use of the imagination 
in all matters of personal and experimental religion. 
But as to Butler,—that great author’s latest and 
best editor, in two paragraphs of really fine criti¬ 
cism, has clearly brought out that what Butler calls 
“ the errors of the imagination ” are not errors of 
the imagination at all, but are the errors of un¬ 
bridled fancy and caprice, and of an unbalanced 
16 


242 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and ill-regulated judgment. “ It seems probable/’ 
so sums up Butler’s venerable editor, “ that this 
is one of the rare instances in which Butler, relaxing 
the firmness of his hold, forgets himself, and assumes 
a licence in the use of words.” And then, the editor 
turns the tables on his admired author by going 
on to say that, in felicity of imaginative illustra¬ 
tion, Butler is the equal of Macaulay himself; while, 
in some other of the exercises of the imagination, 
Butler is even above Burke. 

What, then, you will ask,—with all that,—what 
exactly, and in itself, and at its best, is the imagina¬ 
tion ? Well, come back for a moment to the very 
beginning of all things, if you would have the best 
answer to that question. And, then, I will answer 
that question by asking and answering another 
question. “ How did God create man ? ”—“ God 
created man,” I am answered, “ male and female, 
after His own image , in knowledge, righteousness, 
and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.” 
Our understanding, then, our mind and our memory, 
are both so many images to us of the Divine Mind. 
Our conscience, again, is an inward voice to us, 
impressing upon us an imprint of the Divine 
Righteousness, and the Divine Law. Our will, also, 
and the Divine Will, are of the same Divine Sub¬ 
stance. And as for our heart—it is “ a copy, Lord, 
of Thine.” And then, in his imagination , man 
possesses, and exercises in himself, a certain, and 


IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 


243 


that a not very far-off likeness of the Divine Omni¬ 
presence, and the Divine Omniscience. For, by his 
imagination, a man can look behind, and before, 
and around, and within, and above. By his im¬ 
agination a man can go back to the beginning ere 
ever the earth was. One man has done it. Moses 
has done it. And what Moses has done to this 
earth, that one day will not be remembered nor come 
into mind,—all that John, Moses’ fellow in imagina¬ 
tion, has done to the new heaven and the new earth. 
The imagination, then, whatever else it is, is not 
that “ forward, ever-intruding and delusive faculty ” : 
it is not that “ author of all error,” as Butler, so 
unlike himself, so confuses and miscalls it. Nor is 
it what Pascal so lashes to death with his splendid 
invective. Nor is it imagination at all, as we have 
to do with it to-day, that Edwards so denounces 
in his Religious Affections. 

Imagination, as God in His goodness gave it at 
first to man,—imagination is nothing less than the 
noblest intellectual attribute of the human mind. 
And his imagination is far more to every spiritually- 
minded man than a merely intellectual attribute 
of his mind. I shall not need to go beyond Pascal 
himself,—so splendidly endowed with this splendid 
gift. “ Imagination,” says Pascal, “ creates all 
the beauty, and all the justice, and all the happiness 
that is in the heart of man.” The imagination, 
then, must not be made to bear the blame that 


244 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


really belongs to those men who have prostituted 
it, and have filled its great inward eyes full of 
visions of folly and sin : when they should have set 
the Lord always before their inward eyes, with all 
His works in nature, and in grace, and in glory. 
Because there is only one of a city, and two of a 
family, who ever employ their inward eyes aright, 
—are the inward eyes of those men to be plucked 
out who have on their inward eyes an unction from 
the Holy One ? No. A thousand times, No ! 
“ Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold won¬ 
drous things out of Thy law. I am a stranger in 
the earth : hide not Thy commandments from me.” 

If, then, you would learn to pray to perfection,— 
that is to say, to pray with all that is within you,— 
never fail, never neglect, to do this. Never once 
shut your bodily eyes and bow your knees to begin 
to pray, without, at the same moment, opening 
the eyes of your imagination. It is but a bodily 
service to shut our outward eyes, and not at the 
same moment open the eyes of our inner man. 
Do things like this, then, when you would be in the 
full spirit of prayer. Things, more or less, like this. 
“ I speak as a child.” Let your imagination 
sweep up through the whole visible heavens, up to 
the heaven of heavens. Let her sweep and soar 
on her shining wing, up past sun, moon, and stars. 
Let her leave Orion and the Pleiades far behind 
her. And let her heart swell and beat as she says 


IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 


245 


such things as these to herself: “He made all 
these things. He, Whom I now seek. That is 
His Sun. My Father made them all. My Medi¬ 
ator made them all to the glory of His Father. 
And He is the heir of all things. Oh, to be at 
peace with the Almighty! Oh, never again for one 
moment to forget or disobey, or displease Him ! 
Oh, to be an heir of God, and a joint heir with 
Jesus Christ ! Oh, to be found among the sons and 
the daughters of God Almighty ! ” 

At another time, as you kneel down, flash, in a 
moment,—I still speak as a child,—the eyes of your 
heart back to Adam in his garden, and with the 
image of God still in all its glory upon him : and 
to Abraham over Sodom; and to Moses in the 
cleft of the rock; and to David in the night- 
watches ; and to Jesus Christ all night on the 
mountain top — and your time will not be lost. 
For, by such a flash of your imagination, at such 
a moment, the spirit of grace and supplications will 
be put in complete possession of your whole soul. 
Never open your eyes any morning without, that 
moment, seeing God and saying, “ I laid me down 
and slept; I awaked ; for the Lord sustained me.” 
And never lie down without saying, “ I will both lay 
me down in peace, and sleep : for Thou, Lord, only 
makest me to dwell in safety.” Never set out on 
a journey till you have said to God and to your 
own soul, “ The Lord shall preserve thy going 


240 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


out and thy coming in from this time forth, and 
even for evermore.” And never so much as say 
grace at table, however short time you have to say 
it in, without seeing Him : in the twinkling of an 
eye, be for one moment, if no more, with Him who 
spreads your table, and makes your cup to run over. 
In short, be sure to get a true sight and a true hold 
of God, in some way or other, before you begin either 
prayer or praise. There is nothing in this world so 
difficult. The time it takes, sometimes, and the 
toil, and the devices, and the instrumentalities—you 
would not believe : because no word in all the Bible 
better describes us when we are at prayer, and at 
praise, and at table than this: “ Without God ” ; and 
this: “ Their hearts are far from Me.” Be sure, 
then—with all the help that heaven and earth, 
that God and man can give you—be sure you get 
your eyes and your hands on God in your prayer. 
You may begin and end your prayer without that— 
if you are in a hurry ; and if you have no time or 
taste to give to Him Who will be honoured, and 
waited on, and well pleased with you. But, if so, 
you need not begin. It is not prayer at all. In 
your audience of an earthly sovereign, you would 
not grudge or count up the time and the pains and 
the schooling beforehand. You would not begin 
to speak to him while yet you were in the street, 
or on the stair, and out among the common crowd. 
You would keep your cause in your heart till you 


IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 


247 


were in his presence : and then, when you saw 
him sitting on his throne high up above you, you 
would then fall down before him, and would fill 
your mouth with arguments. 

Never say any of your idle words to Almighty 
God. Say your idle words to your equals. Say 
them to your sovereigns. But, never, as you shall 
answer for it,—never, all your days,—to God. Set 
the Lord always before you. Direct your prayer 
to Him, and look up. Better be somewhat too 
bold and somewhat unseemly than altogether to 
neglect and forget Almighty God. Better say that 
so bold saying,—“ I will not let Thee go/' than 
pray with such laziness and sleepiness and stupidity 
as we now pray. Look for God, and look at God : 
till you can honestly say to Him, with Dr. Newman, 
a great genius and a great saint, that there are now, 
to you, two and two only supreme and luminously 
self-evident beings in the whole universe, yourself 
and your Creator. And, when once you begin to 
pray in that way, you will know it. Every prayer 
of yours like that will, ever after, leave its lasting 
mark upon you. You will not long remain the 
same man. Praying, with the imagination all 
awake, and all employed—such praying will soon 
drink up your whole soul into itself. You will 
then “ pray always.” It will be to you by far the 
noblest and the most blessed of all your employ¬ 
ments in this present world. You will pray “ with- 


248 LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

out ceasing." We shall have to drag you out of 
your closet by main force. You will then be 
prayerful “ over much." “ Whether in the body 
I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I 
cannot tell: God knoweth." Such will you all 
become when you accustom your inward eyes to 
see and to brood continually on the power, and on 
the greatness, and on the goodness, and on the 
grace and on the glory of God. 

Yes, but all the time, what about this ?—you 
will ask : what about this—that “ no man hath 
seen God at any time " ? Well,—that is true, and 
well remembered, and opportunely and appropri¬ 
ately brought forward. Whatever else is true or 
false, that is true. That, all the time, abides the 
deepest and the surest of truths. And thus it was 
that the Invisible Father sent His Son to take our 
“ opaque and palpable " flesh, and, in it, to reveal 
the Father. “ And the Word was made flesh, and 
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory." And it 
is this being “ made flesh " of the Son of God that 
has enabled us to see God. It is the birth and the 
whole life, and the words, and the works, and the 
death, and the resurrection, and the ascension, and 
the revelation from heaven again of Jesus Christ— 
it is all this that has for ever opened up such new 
and boundless worlds which the Christian imagina¬ 
tion may visit, and in which she may expatiate and 
regale herself continually. 


IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 


249 


The absolute and pure Godhead is utterly and 
absolutely out of all reach even of the highest 
flights of the imagination of man. The pure and 
unincarnated Godhead dwells in light which no 
man’s imagination has ever seen even afar off, or 
ever can see. But then, hear this. “ He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father.” Well, if that is 
true, come now ! Awake up, O my baffled and 
beaten-back imagination! Awake, and look at 
last upon thy God ! Awake, and feast thyself for 
ever on thy God! Bathe, and sun, and satiate thy¬ 
self to all eternity, in the sweetness and in the 
beauty and in the light, and in the glory of thy God ! 
There is nothing, in earth or in heaven, to our 
imagination now like the Word made flesh. We 
cannot waste any more, so much as one beat of 
her wing, or one glance of her eye, or one heave 
of her heart on any one else, in heaven or earth, but 
the Word made flesh . “ Whom have I in heaven 

but Thee ? And there is none upon earth that I 
desire beside Thee.” There is a cold and heartless 
proverb among men to this effect : “ Out of sight, 
out of mind.” And this cold and heartless proverb 
would be wholly true—even of believing men—if 
it were not for the divine offices and the splendid 
services of the Christian imagination. But the 
truly Christian imagination never lets Jesus Christ 
out of her sight. And she keeps Him in her sight 
and ever before her inward eyes in this way. You 


250 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


open your New Testament—which is her peculiar 
and most delightful field,—you open that Book of 
books, say, at the beginning of the Sermon on the 
Mount. And, by your imagination, that moment 
you are one of Christ’s disciples on the spot, and are 
at His feet. And all that Sermon you never once 
lift your eyes off the Great Preacher. You hear 
nothing else, and you see nothing else, till He shuts 
the Book and says : “ Great was the fall of the 
house,”—and so ends His sermon. All through 
His sermon you have seen the working of His face. 
In every word of His sermon, you have felt the 
beating of His heart. Your eye has met His eye, 
again and again, till you are in chains of grace and 
truth to Him ever after. And then, no sooner has 
He risen up, and come down the hill, than a leper, 
who dared not go up the hill, falls down at His feet, 
and says, " Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make 
me clean ! ” And all your days, ever since that 
Sermon, you are that leper. All that day you have 
been more and more like that leper, till now, as that 
day closes, you are like him nigh unto death. You 
worship Christ like the leper. He is beside you. 
He stands over you. You feel, as never before, 
the leprosy of sin. It fills full your polluted heart. 
The diseased flesh of that poor leper is the flesh 
of a little child compared with you and with your 
heart. Till in a more than leper-like loathing at 
yourself, and a more than leper-like despair of 


IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 


251 


yourself, you bury your face before His feet, and 
cry to Him : “ But, Lord, if Thou only wilt, Thou 
canst make me clean! ” 

And so on—as often as, with your imagination 
anointed with holy oil, you again open your New 
Testament. At one time, you are the publican : at 
another time, you are the prodigal: at another 
time, you are Lazarus, in his grave, beside whose 
dead body it was not safe or fit for a living man to 
come : at another time, you are Mary Magdalene : 
at another time, Peter in the porch: -and then at 
another time, Judas with the money of the chief 
priest in his hand, and afterwards with his halter 
round his neck. Till your whole New Testament 
is all over autobiographic of you. And till you can 
say to Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and to John 
himself : Now I believe ; and not for your sayings 
so much ; for I have seen Him myself, and have 
myself been healed of Him, and know that this is 
indeed the Christ of God, and the Saviour of the 
World. Never, then, I implore you, I demand of 
you—never, now, all the days and nights that are 
left to you—never open your New Testament till 
you have offered this prayer to God the Holy 
Ghost: “ Open Thou mine eyes! ” And then, as 
you read, stop and ponder : stop and open your 
eyes : stop and imagine : stop till you actually see 
Jesus Christ in the same room with you. " Lo ! 
I am with you alway ! ” Ask Him, if He hides 


252 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


Himself from you, ask Him aloud,—yes, aloud,— 
whether these are, indeed, His words to you, or no. 
Expect Him. Rise up, and open to Him. Salute 
Him. Put down your book. Put down your light, 
and then say such things as these—say: “ Jesus 
Christ ! Son of David! Son of Mary! Car¬ 
penter’s Son ! Son of God ! Saviour of Sinners, 
of whom I am chief ! ” Speak it out. Do not be 
afraid that both men and devils hear thee speaking 
to thy Saviour. What about them all when thou 
art alone with the Son of God ? And, besides, all 
men are asleep. “ Art thou, in very truth, here, 
O Christ ? Dost Thou see me ? Dost Thou hear 
me ? Yes ! Thou art here ! I am sure of it. I feel 
it. 0 blessed One ! 0 Son of the Highest ! I am 

not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my 
roof. But Thou art here ! Here, of all the houses 
in the whole city ! And, here, with me —O my 
Saviour : with me of all men in the whole city ! ” 
Fall at His feet, kiss His feet. Kiss His feet till thy 
lips come upon an iron nail in them : and, after 
that, thou wilt know, of a truth, Who He is, that 
is with thee in the night-watches ! 

But your absolutely highest, and absolutely 
best, and absolutely boldest use of your imagina¬ 
tion has yet to be told, if you are able to bear it, and 
are willing to receive it. It is a very high and a very 
fruitful employment of your imagination to go back 
and to put yourself by means of it into the place of 


IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 


253 


Adam, and Abraham, and Moses, and Job, and 
Peter, and Judas, and the Magdalene, and the thief 
on the cross. But, to put out this magnificent 
talent to its very best usury, you must take the 
highest boldness in all the world, and put yourself 
in the place of Christ Himself. Put yourself and 
all that is within you into the Hand of the Holy 
Ghost, and He will help you, most willingly and 
most successfully, to imagine yourself to be Jesus 
Christ. Imagine yourself, then, to be back in 
Nazareth, where He was brought up. Imagine 
yourself,—and show to your son and your Sunday 
school scholar the way to imagine himself,—sitting 
beside Joseph and Mary every Sabbath day in that 
little synagogue. Imagine yourself to be the 
carpenter’s son, as He was. Imagine yourself at 
Jordan at John’s great awakening of the dry bones, 
and then at John’s Baptism. Imagine yourself 
fighting the devil in the wilderness with nothing 
but fasting and praying and the Word of God for 
weapons. Imagine yourself without where to lay 
your head. Imagine all your disciples turning 
against you and forsaking you. Imagine the upper 
room, and the garden, and the arrest and the 
Cross, and the darkness, and “ My God, My God, 
why hast Thou forsaken Me ? ” Did you ever 
imagine yourself to be crucified ? Paul did. 
And the imagination made him the matchless 
apostle of the Cross that he was. And then, imagine 


254 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


yourself Christ risen, and in glory, and looking down 
on your heart, and on your life, and on your closet, 
and on your bed. Imagine Him seeing you ,—your 
mind, your heart, your inspiration, your motives, 
your intentions, your thoughts :—all you think, 
and all you say, and all you do. And then,—I 
challenge you to imagine what He must be thinking 
and feeling, and making up His mind to-day as to 
what He is to say, and to do, to you ; and when ! 
What would you say about yourself, if you were in His 
place,—if you had died on the tree for such sins as 
yours, and then saw yourself what, all tins time, 
you are, having no wish and no intention ever to 
be otherwise ? I think you would throw down 
your office. I feel sure you would wash your hands 
of yourself. You would say, “ Let him alone ! ” 
You would say “Cut it down! Why cumbereth 
it the ground ? ” I will tell you literally and 
exactly what you would say. From God’s word 
I will tell you what any honest and earnest and 
wearied-out and insulted man would say, and 
what may this moment, for anything you know, be 
said over you from the great white throne of God. 
“ Because I have called, and ye refused; I have 
stretched out My hand, and no man regarded. . . . 
I will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when 
your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desola¬ 
tion, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind. 
. . . For that they hated knowledge, and did not 


IMAGINATION IN PRAYER 255 

choose the fear of the Lord.” Imagine the Lamb 
in His wrath saying that ! And imagine yourself 
dying* and not knowing at threescore and ten how 
to pray ! Imagine yourself at the river, and no one 
there to meet you—and no one to say to you, “ I 
will be with thee ” ! Imagine the Judge in His hot 
anger saying itand shutting to the door—“ I 
never knew you ” ! And then, imagine with all 
your might of imagination — imagine that, by an 
unparalleled act of God’s grace, you are sent back 
again to this world, just for one more year, just 
for one more week, just for one more Sabbath day 
or Sabbath night ! O prayer-neglecting sinner! 
O equally prayer-neglecting child of God! One 
more Sabbath day of the Mercy-seat, and the 
Mediator at God’s right hand, and the Blood of 
Christ that speaketh peace ! 

“ I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear : 
but now, mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor 
myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” 


XXI 


THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN PRAYER 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ When ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against 
any.”—M ark xi. 25. 

Prayer is a world by itself, a whole world, and a 
great world too. There is a science of prayer, and 
there is an art of prayer. There are more arts 
than one that rise out of a life of prayer, and that 
go to make up a life of prayer. Prayer is an educa¬ 
tion and a discipline : it is a great undertaking 
and a great achievement. And, like every other 
art, education, discipline, attainment and achieve¬ 
ment, prayer has its own means and its own methods, 
its own instruments, and its own aids and appliances 
whereby to attain, and whereby to secure its ends. 

There is a whole literature of prayer also. There 
are some, not small, libraries into which there is 
nothing else collected but the classics of prayer. 
There is even a bibliography of prayer. And there 
are bookworms who can direct you to all that has 
ever been written or printed about prayer ; but 
who never come to any eminence, or success, in 
prayer themselves. While, on the other hand, 

256 


THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN PRAYER 257 


there are men who are recognised adepts and experts 
in prayer, proficient and past masters in prayer. 
There is nothing in which we need to take so many 
lessons as in prayer. There is nothing of which we 
are so utterly ignorant when we first begin; there 
is nothing in which we are so helpless. And there 
is nothing else that we are so bad at all our days. 
We have an inborn, a constitutional, a habitual, 
and, indeed, an hereditary dislike of prayer, and of 
everything of the nature of prayer. We are not 
only ignorant here, and incapable : we' are incor¬ 
rigibly and unconquerably unwilling to learn. And 
when we begin to learn we need a lesson every day, 
almost every hour. A lesson to-day, and a lesson 
to-morrow ) a lesson in the morning, and a lesson 
at night. We need to have old lessons gone over 
again, revised and repeated incessantly. We need, 
as the schoolboys say, to go over the rudiments 
again and again, till we have all the axioms, and 
elementary rules and paradigms, and first principles 
of prayer made part and parcel of ourselves. Such 
axioms and such first principles as these : “He 
that cometh to God must believe that He is.” 
“ Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast 
out.” “ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.” 
“ When ye stand praying, forgive ”—these axioms 

and elements, and such-like. 

We have had some lessons in prayer given us of 
late in this house; and here is another. And, 

17 


258 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

like all our Lord’s lessons, it is impossible to mis¬ 
understand it, or to forget it. No,—I must not 
say that, for such is the depravity and the deceitful¬ 
ness of our hearts that there is nothing that we will 
not misunderstand and despise and cast behind 
our back. Only, prayer—prayer sufficiently per¬ 
severed in — will at last overmaster even our 
deep depravity; and, 0 my brethren, what a 
blessed overmastery that will be ! Speak, then, 
Lord ! Speak once again to us what Thou wilt 
have us to hear about prayer, and we will attend 
this time and will obey ! 

i. I do not think that there is anything that our 
Lord returns on so often as the forgiveness of in¬ 
juries. And the reason of that may very well be 
because our lives are so full of injuries, both real 
and supposed, and both given and received. As 
also because the thoughts and the feelings, the 
words and the deeds, that injury awakens towards 
one another in our hearts, are so opposed to His 
mind and His spirit. It is remarkable, and we 
cannot forget it, that the only petition in the 
prayer that our Lord taught His disciples,—the 
only petition that He repeats and underscores, as 
we say,—is the fifth petition : “ Forgive us our 
trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against 
us.” No sooner has He said Amen than He takes 
His disciples back again to their “ trespasses,” and 
warns them in these solemnising and arresting 


THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN PRAYER 259 


words : “ For, if ye forgive men their trespasses, 
your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But 
if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will 
your Father forgive your trespasses/' As much as 
to say that the forgiveness of injuries will be the very 
hardest of all the holy tempers that I shall ever have 
to ask of you. The motions of spite and ill-will are 
the most difficult of all its sinful motions to subdue 
in the human heart. At the same time, He adds, 
as long as those so wicked and detestable tempers 
hold possession of your hearts, your prayers and 
everything else will be an abomination before God. 

2. It is not told us in so many words, but I think 
I see how it came to pass that we have the text. 
Our Lord saw His disciples every day employing 
the prayer He had taught them : He heard them 
saying night and morning, “ Forgive us our debts, 
as we forgive our debtors," with all their bad 
passions all the time in a blaze at one another. 
They were disputing every day who was to be the 
greatest. The ten " had indignation ” at the two 
brethren because their foolish mother had asked of 
Christ the two chief seats in His Kingdom for her 
two sons. They were all trespassing every day 
against one another, just like ourselves, till their 
Master stopped them one day in the very middle 
of their Lord's Prayer, and said, Stand still ! 
stop ! say no more till you have forgiven your 
offending brother: and then, go on, and finish 


260 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


your prayer with assurance, and with a good 
conscience. He laid His hand on Peter’s mouth 
that day, and would not let Peter finish till he had, 
from his heart, forgiven the two ambitious brethren. 
And it was that arrest and interdict that his Master 
put upon Peter’s prayer that made Peter expostu¬ 
late, and say, “ Lord, how oft shall my brother sin 
against me, and I forgive him ? ” And his Master 
said to Peter, “ I say not unto thee, Until seven 
times: but, Until seventy times seven.” Yes, 
Peter, said his Master to Peter that day,—once 
your conscience is fully awake, and once your 
heart is fully broken, you will never once be able 
to say, Forgive me my debts, till you have already 
forgiven some great debtor of yours. You will 
always do on the spot what you ask God to do to 
you. And it will be by so doing that you will be 
a child of your Father Which is in Heaven ; Who 
maketh His sun to rise upon the evil and the good, 
and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. 

Do you ever feel that same hand stopping your 
mouth, my brethren ? Is your prayer ever cut in 
two and suspended, till your heart is searched out, 
and made quiet, and clean, and sweet to some of 
these, your offending brethren ? Or, better still: 
has Jesus Christ so penetrated and inspired your 
heart, and your conscience, and your imagination 
with. His grace and His truth that you never,— 
either in the church or at home, either among 


THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN PRAYER 261 

your children or alone on vour own knees,—never 
once say the Lord’s Prayer, without naming in the 
middle of it, and at the fifth petition of it, some of 
us who vex you, or offend you, or trespass in some 
way against you ? some one of us towards whom 
you have an antipathy, or a distaste, or a secret 
grudge, or some inveterate ill-will ? Standing, or 
sitting, or kneeling, or lying on your face in prayer— 
is God your Witness, and your Hearer, and your 
Judge, that you forgive us, as often as you remember 
that you have ought against us ? Do you do that ? 
Well, I am sure if we, not to speak of God, knew 
that, and could believe it about you, you would 
not soon have occasion to forgive us again ! God 
bless you, all the same, and hear your prayer ! 

3 . You would, as I think, find this to be helpful 
when you “ stand praying,” and are as yet unable 
to forgive. Try this the next time. Say this to 
yourself. Say something like this. What, ex¬ 
actly, is it that 1 have against that man?" Put it 
in words. Put it to yourself as you would put it to 
a third person. Calm reflection, and a little frank and 
honest self-examination, is a kind of third person, 
and will suffice you for his office. And so stated, 
so looked at, that mortal offence turns out to be not 
half so bad as it has up till now been felt to be. 
Our pride, and our self-importance, often blow 
up a small matter into a mortal injury. Many of 
our insults and injuries are fai more imaginary 


262 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


than real: though our sin and our misery on 
account of them are real enough. Look at the 
offender. Look closely at him. Do not avoid 
him. Do not refuse to have a talk with him. If 
possible, eat a meal now and then with him. Make 
a great and noble effort, and put yourself in his 
place in all this unhappy business. For once 
be honest, and just, and generous. See yourself 
as he has seen you. Allow and admit his side of it 
for a moment. Allow and admit that you differ from 
him, as Butler has it, quite as much as he differs 
from you. Let a little daylight, as Bacon has it, 
fall on this case that is between him and you. Let 
a little of the light of love, and humility, and good¬ 
will fall on him, and on yourself—and, already, 
your prayer is heard! You may go on and finish your 
prayer now. Your trespasses are already as good 
as forgiven. They are : since you are all but ready 
to admit that a great part of your hurt and pain 
and anger and resentment is due to yourself, and 
not to your neighbour at all. And once your 
neighbour has come to your assistance in that way 
in your prayer, he will come again, and will come 
often, till you and he, meeting so often in amity 
before God, will only wait for God’s promised oppor¬ 
tunity to be the closest and the best of friends 
again, not only before God, but before men also. 
For, “He is our peace; Who hath abolished the 
enmity, so making peace.” 


THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN PRAYER 268 


4 . You will find this to be helpful also in some 
extreme cases. When there is some one who is 
trespassing against you “ seven times a day ” ; 
some one whose tongue works continually against 
you like a sharp razor ; some one whose words are 
as a sword in your bones ; some one who despite- 
fully uses you, and persecutes you ; some one who 
returns you only evil for all the good you have done 
to him and his,—and so on. There have been 
such extreme cases. Your own case, in short. 
Well. What do you wish to have done to him ? 
There are prayers for all kinds of cases in the Bible. 
And here is one for you. “ Let his days be few ; 
and let another take his office. Let his children 
be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children 
be continually vagabonds, and beg. . . . Let his 
posterity be cut off ; and in the generation following 
let their name be blotted out. ... As he loved 
cursing, so let it come unto him : as he delighted 
not in blessing, so let it be far from him.” When 
you stand praying, put up that prayer. Say that : 
and then say, “ For Christ’s sake, Amen! ” And, 
then, out of the same psalm, add this for your so 
suffering soul: “ But do Thou for me, 0 God the 
Lord, for Thy name’s sake : because Thy mercy is 
good, deliver Thou me.” I have known men to be 
cured of malice and ill-will by offering that prayer 
morning and night, and at the Lord s Table. I 
have known groanings, that could not be uttered 


264 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 

before, find utterance in the words of that devoting 
psalm. Try it on your enemy in the extremity of 
your injury and ill-will. And it will, by God’s 
blessing, do for you and for your heart what it 
has done by God’s blessing for far worse hearts than 
yours. 

How horrible, and how hell-like, is a revenge¬ 
ful heart! While how beautiful, and how like 
heaven itself, is a humble, a meek, a patient, 
and a Christ-like heart ! I have been refreshing 
and enlarging and ennobling my heart among 
Plutarch’s noble Grecians and Romans in my spare 
hours this past winter,—when you give Plutarch 
in a present let it be in Thomas North’s Bible 
English,—and at this point Plutarch’s Pericles 
comes to my mind. " For he grew not only to 
have a great mind and an eloquent tongue, without 
any affectation, or gross country terms ; but to a 
certain modest countenance that scantly smiled : 
very sober in his gait : having a kind of sound in 
his voice that he never lost nor altered : and was of 
very honest behaviour : never troubled in his talk 
for anything that crossed him : and many such like 
things, as all that saw them in him, and considered 
him, could but wonder at him. But for proof 
hereof, the report goeth, there was a naughty busy 
fellow on a time, that a whole day together did 
nothing but rail upon Pericles in the market-place, 
and revile him to his face, with all the villainous 


THE FORGIVING SPIRIT IN PRAYER 265 


words he could use. But Pericles put all up quietly, 
and gave him not a word again, dispatching in the 
meantime matters of importance he had in hand, 
till night came, that he went softly to his home, 
showing no alteration nor semblance of trouble at 
all, though this lewd varlet followed at his heels 
with all the villainous words he could use. But 
Pericles put all up quietly and gave him not a word 
again. And as he was at his own door, being dark 
night, he commanded one of his men to take a 
torch and take that man back to his own house.” 
An apple of gold in a picture of silver ! 

But, both in patience and in forgiveness of in¬ 
juries, as in all else, behold, a Greater than Pericles 
is here ! He Who gave Pericles that noble heart 
is here teaching us and training us by doctrine, and 
by example, and by opportunity, to a nobler heart 
than any of Plutarch’s noblest Greeks or Romans. 
I know nothing outside of the New Testament 
nobler in this noble matter than the Ethics, and 
the Morals, and the Parallel Lives : but I read 
neither in Aristotle, nor in Plato, nor in Plutarch 
anything like this : “ Blessed are ye, when men 
shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say 
all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. 
Rejoice and be exceeding glad : for great is your 
reward in heaven.” Our Master, you see, actually 
congratulates us on our enemies, and backbiters, 
and false friends. He lifts us out of all our bitter- 


266 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


ness, and gloom, and despondency, and resentment, 
up into the sunshine of His own humble, loving, 
forgiving heart. And as if His heavenly teaching 
was not enough. He leaves us His example so that 
we may follow in His steps. And He leaves it—it 
is beautiful to see—first to Peter, who hands it 
down, after he is done with it, to us. Hold up, 
then, your hurt and proud and revengeful hearts, 
O all ye disciples of Christ, and let Peter, by the 
Holy Ghost, write this on the hard and cruel tables 
of your hearts. This : “ Christ also suffered for 
us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow 
His steps. Who, when He was reviled, reviled 
not again ; when He suffered, He threatened not. 
. . . Who, His own self, bare our sins on His own 
body on the tree : ... by whose stripes ye were 
healed.’* Come, then, my brethren, with all your 
wrongs and all your injuries, real and supposed, 
great and small; greatly exaggerated, and im¬ 
possible to be exaggerated. And when you stand 
praying, spread them all out before God. Name 
them, and describe them to Him. And He will 
hear you, and He will help you till you are able, 
under the last and the greatest of them, to say, 
“ Father, forgive them : for they know not what 
they do.” 


XXII 

THE SECRET BURDEN 


“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ Apart. . . .”— Zech. xii. 12. 

Down to Gehenna, and up to the throne, 

He travels the fastest, who travels alone. 

That is to say, secret sin, and secret prayer, have 
this in common, that they both make a man travel 
his fastest. Secret sin makes him who commits 
it travel his fastest down to Gehenna,—that is to 
say, down into '‘the fire that is not quenched.” 
Whereas secret prayer makes him who so prays 
travel his very fastest up to the throne of God, and 
up to his own throne in heaven. 

Down to Gehenna, and up to the throne. 

He travels the fastest, who travels alone. 

“ Apart ! Apart ! Apart ! ” proclaims this 
prophet, ten times, in the text. If he could only 
get “ the house of David, and the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem ” to pray, and to pray apart —the 
Fountain for sin and for uncleanness would soon 
be opened; and the Kingdom of God would soon 
come. “ Apart ! Apart ! Apart! ” he cries 
“ Every family apart, and their wives apart ! ” 

267 


268 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


This truly evangelical prophet is very importun¬ 
ate with the people to whom he preaches, to get 
them to take the fullest and the most universal 
advantage of this apartness in prayer. Apartness 
in prayer has immense and incomparable advant¬ 
ages over all other kinds and practices of prayer : 
and this prophet urges it on his people with all his 
authority and with all possible earnestness. He 
would have all ranks, and all classes, and all occupa¬ 
tions, and all ages, and both sexes, to begin, and 
to continue, to pray apart. Indeed, he as good 
as proclaims to them, with all his prophetic power 
and passion, that the man who does not pray apart 
does not properly pray at all. And our Lord sup¬ 
ports this prophet and says the same thing in one 
of His well-known utterances about prayer. Thou, 
He says, when thou prayest, go apart first. Go 
away to some retreat of thine, where thou art sure 
that no eye sees thee, and no ear hears thee, and 
where no man so much as suspects where thou art, 
and what thou art doing. Enter thy closet; and, 
with thy door shut on thee, and on thy Father 
with thee ,—then pray. 

There it is—written all over our open Bible so 
that he who runs may read it,—the sure and certain 
blessedness of prayer apart , the immediate and the 
immense advantage and privilege of private prayer. 
But not only is all that written all over both the Old 
Testament and the New, it is illustrated and en- 


THE SECRET BURDEN 


269 


forced on us out of our own experience every day. 
Let us just take ourselves here as so many proofs 
and pictures of the advantage and superiority and 
privilege of private prayer over public prayer. And 
take just your minister and then yourselves in 
proof and in illustration of this. As soon as the 
church bells stop ringing on the Sabbath morning, 
your ministers must immediately begin to pray 
openly and before men—whether they are prepared 
or no ; whether they are in the proper spirit or no ; 
and whether they have recovered their lost sight 
and lost hold of God that morning or no. It is 
expected of them that, as soon as the opening psalm 
is sung, the pulpit should begin to pray. 

And you get,—more or less,—every Sabbath 
morning from the pulpit what you pay your seat 
for, and demand of us in return. You get a few 
well-repeated liturgical passages. You get a few 
well-selected texts taken out of the Psalms. And 
then a promise or two taken out of the prophets 
and the apostles,—all artistically wound up with a 
few words of doxology. But all that, four or five 
times every Sabbath day, is not prayer. All that 
is a certain open and public acknowledgment and 
tribute to the House of Prayer, and to the Day of 
Prayer ; but nobody with an atom of sense or 
spirit ever supposes that that is prayer. And then 
we have to stop our Sabbath morning prayer before 
we have well begun it. You allow, and measure 


270 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


out to us by your watches, our limit. We must say 
our pulpit prayers before you at the proper moment, 
in the proper tones, and to the proper length,—on 
the pain of losing your countenance and patronage. 
And on the other hand, though our hearts are 
breaking, we must begin at the advertised hour. 
And we must not by a sigh, or a sob, or a tear, or by 
one utterance of reality and sincerity, annoy or 
startle or upset you. We must please you with 
a pleasant voice. Our very pronunciation and 
accent must be the same as yours,—else you will 
not have it. We may let out our passions in every¬ 
thing else, as much as we like,—but not on Sabbath, 
and, above all, not in pulpit prayer. These are 
some of the inconveniences and disadvantages and 
dangers of public prayer to your ministers. But 
out of the pulpit, and sufficiently away and apart 
from you,—we can do what we like. We have no 
longer to please you to your edification. We can 
wait as long as we like in our closet, before we 
attempt to pray. The day is over now, and the 
duties of the day : we are in no hurry now : we 
are under no rule of use and wont now. We can 
watch a whole hour now, if we are not too tired and 
sleepy. We can sit down and read, and muse, and 
meditate, and make images of things to ourselves 
out of our Bible, or out of our Andrewes, till the fire 
begins to burn ! That was what David did. “ My 
heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire 



THE SECRET BURDEN 27 

burned: then spake I with my tongue.” And 
the minutes toward midnight may run on to 
hours ; and the midnight hours to morning watches ; 
and yet we will run no danger of wearying out 
Him who slumbers not nor sleeps : He still waits 
to be gracious. What we ministers, of all men, 
would do without prayer apart,—I cannot imagine 
what would become of us ! But, with his closet, 
and with the key of his closet continually in his 
hand, no minister need despair, even though he is 
a great orator, with a great gift of public prayer. 
" Apart ! Apart ! Apart ! ” this great prophet keeps 
ringing in every minister’s ears. “ Apart ! Apart ! 
Apart ! Every minister—of all men,—apart ! ” 

And the very same thing holds true of yourselves, 
my praying brethren. You have the very same 
out-gate and retreat in private prayer that we have. 
You can escape apart from us, and from all our 
pulpit prayers. God help you if you do not ! If 
all your praying is performed here,—and if it is 
all performed by your minister for you,—may God 
pity you, and teach you Himself to pray ! But if 
you are living a life of secret prayer, then you are 
not dependent on us ; and we are not so ruinously 
responsible for you. And indeed, if you pray much 
apart, you are already beyond our depth. You are 
wiser than all your teachers. You could teach us. 
I sometimes see you, and see what you are thinking 
about, when you are not aware. You listen to us 



272 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


in our public prayers. And you smile to yourself 
as you see us attempting a thing in public that— 
you see quite well—we know next to nothing about 
in private. We have our reward of others, but not 
of you : you say nothing. You sit out the public 
worship, and then you rise up, and go home. It is 
with you as when a hungry man dreameth and; 
behold, he eateth; but he awaketh and his soul 
is empty. Till you get home, and the house is 
asleep. And then, could we but act the eaves¬ 
dropper that night ! Could we but get our ear 
close to your keyhole, we should learn a lesson in 
prayer that we should not forget. You must surely 
see what I am driving at in all this, do you not ? 
I am labouring, and risking something, to prove 
this to you, and to print it on your hearts,—the 
immense privilege and the immense and incom¬ 
parable opportunity and advantage of private 
prayer, of prayer apart. 

And then, for a further illustration of this argu¬ 
ment, take the confession of sin , in public and in 
private prayer. The feeling of sin is the most 
personal, and poignant, and overpowering part of 
your daily and hourly prayer. And, if you will 
think about it for one moment, you will see how 
absolutely impossible it is for you to discover, and 
to lay bare and to put the proper words and feelings 
upon yourself and upon your sin, in public prayer. 
You cannot do it. You dare not do it. And when 


THE SECRET BURDEN 


273 


you do do it, under some unbearable load of guilt, 
or under some overpowering pain of heart,—you do 
yourself no good, and you do all who hear you real 
evil. You offend them. You tempt them to think 
and to speak about you and your prayers, which is 
a most mischievous thing: you terrify, like Thomas 
Boston, the godly. And, after all; after all 
that injurious truthfulness and plain-spokenness of 
yours in prayer,—with all that, you cannot in 
public prayer go out sufficiently into particulars 
and instances, and times, and places, and people. 
Particularity, and taking instances , is the very life¬ 
blood of all true and prevailing prayer. But you 
dare not do that : you dare not take an outstanding 
instance of your daily sinfulness and utter corrup¬ 
tion of heart in public or in family prayer. It 
would be insufferable and unpardonable. It is never 
done. And you must not under any temptation 
of conscience, or of heart, ever do it. When your 
door is shut, and when all public propriety, and 
all formality, and insincerity is shut out, then you 
can say and do anything to which the spirit moves 
you. You can pray all night on your face, if you like, 
like your Lord in Gethsemane. When you are so full 
of sin that you are beside yourself with the leprosy 
of it and with the shame and the pain of it,—they 
would carry you to the madhouse, if you let yourself 
say and do in public what all God’s greatest saints, 

beginning with God’s Son, have continually done in 
18 


274 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


private. But your soul may sweat great drops of 
blood in secret, and no human being is any wiser 
And as for those who watch you and see it all,— 
“ there is joy in heaven ” over you from that night. 
Not one in ten of you have ever done it, possibly 
not one in a hundred : but when you begin really 
to look on Him whom you have pierced, as this 
great prophet has it, then you will begin to under¬ 
stand what it is to be in bitterness, and to mourn 
apart, as one is in bitterness for his first-born. 
Then, no pulpit confession, and no family altar, will 
relieve your heart. For then, there will be a life¬ 
long mourning in your heart as the mourning of 
Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. “ Oh/* 
you will cry, “ oh, that mine head were waters, and 
mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep 
day and night for the Son of God whom I have 
slain by my sin! Oh, that I had in the wilderness 
a lodging-place of wayfaring men ; that I might 
leave my people, and go from them to weep for my 
sin against my God and my Saviour ! ” And God 
will provide such a place apart for you, and for 
Himself with you,—till one day, when your head 
is, as never before, “ waters/’ He will say: “ It is 
enough, go in peace. Weep no more/’ And He 
will wipe all tears from your eyes. 

And the very same thing holds true of all inter¬ 
cessory prayer. It would be an impertinence and 
an impudence ; it would be an ostentation and a 


THE SECRET BURDEN 


275 


presumption to pray for other men in public, as 
you are permitted and enabled and commanded 
to pray for them in private. It would be resented, 
and never forgiven. In intercessory prayer in 
public, particulars and instances, and actual 
persons, and special and peculiar cases, are absolutely 
impracticable and impossible. You simply dare not 
pray, in public, for other men,—any more than for 
yourself,—as they need to be prayed for. You 
would be arrested and imprisoned under the 
law of libel if you did it. Were you to see these 
men and women around you as they are ; and were 
you to describe them, and to plead with God to 
redeem and renew, and restore, and save them,— 
the judge would shut your mouth. But in private, 
neither your friend nor your enemy will ever know, 
or even guess, till the last day, what they owe to you, 
and to your closet. You will never incur either 
blame or resentment or retaliation by the way you 
speak about them and their needs in the ear of God. 
The things that are notoriously and irrecoverably 
destroying the character and the usefulness of your 
fellow-worshipper—you may not so much as whisper 
them to your best friend, or to his. But you can, 
and you must, bear him by name, and all his sins 
and vices, all that is deplorable, and all that is 
contemptible about him, before God. And if you 
do so; and if you persist and persevere in doing 
S0} _though you would not believe it,—you will 


276 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


come out of your closet to love, and to honour, and 
to put up with, and to protect, and to defend your 
client the more,—the more you see what is wrong 
with him, and the more you importune God in his 
behalf. Intercessory prayer, in the pulpit, usually 
begins with the Sovereign, and the Royal Family, 
and the Prime Minister, and the Parliament, and 
so on. You all know the monotonous and meaning¬ 
less rubric. But nobody is any better, Sovereign 
nor Parliament, because nobody is in earnest. We 
pray for the Sovereign, in order to be seen and 
heard and approved of men. But in secret,—it is 
another matter. If you ever—before God and in faith 
and love—prayed for your Sovereign, or for any great 
personage sincerely, and with importunity, you 
then began to feel toward them in a new way; and 
you began to have your answer returned into your 
own bosom, if not yet into theirs, in the shape of 
real honour, and real love, and real good-will, 
and real good wishes, and more and better prayer, 
for those you so pray for. “ I exhort therefore 
that, first of all, supplications, prayers, inter¬ 
cessions, be made for all men; for kings, and for 
all that are in authority ; that we may lead a quiet 
and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. . . . 
For there is one God, and one Mediator between 
God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. ... I will 
therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy 
hands, without wrath and doubting.” 


THE SECRET BURDEN 


277 


And, then,—to conclude this great argument,— 
take thanksgiving , which is, by far, the best and 
the most blessed part of both public and private 
prayer. You cannot thank God with all your heart 
in public. You cannot tell in public—even to 
them that fear God—all that God has done for 
your soul. Even David himself could not do it. 
He tried it, again and again : but he had to give up 
the attempt. In public, that is, and before the 
great congregation, he could not do it. You see him 
attempting it, again and again; but the great 
congregation is not able to bear it. Here is the 
best specimen of a true thanksgiving I have ever 
met with. But then, it is not a public, but a private 
devotion,—as its title-page bears. 

“ O God,” this man of prayer said in secret to 
God once every week, taking a whole night to it: 
going out into particulars, and giving instances, 
and names, and dates. 

“ O God, I thank Thee for my existence : for my 
life, and for my reason. For all Thy gifts to me of 
grace, nature, fortune”—(enumerating and naming 
them, and taking time to do it)—“ for all Thy 
forbearance, long-suffering, long long-suffering to 
me-ward, up to this night. For all good things I 
have received of Thy hand ”—(naming some of 
them)—“ for my parents honest and good ” (re¬ 
collecting them, and recollecting instances and 
occasions of their honesty and goodness)—“ and 


278 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


for benefactors, never to be forgotten ” (naming 
them). “ For religious, and literary, and social 
intimates, so congenial, and so helpful. For all 
who have helped me by their writings,—(and at 
that he rises off his knees, and walks round his 
library, and passes his eye along its so helpful 
shelves).—“For all who have saved my soul also 
by their sermons, and their prayers ” (and at this 
he recalls great preachers of the soul, some dead, 
and some still alive and open to his acknowledg¬ 
ments). “ For all whose rebukes and remon¬ 
strances have arrested and reformed me. For 
those even who have, some intentionally, and 
some unintentionally, insulted and injured me,— 
but I have got good out of it all,”—and so on. 
You could not offer a sacrifice of praise like that 
before everybody. You could not do it with 
propriety before anybody ! And it would be still 
more impossible to go on, and to give instances 
and particulars like this : and, without instances 
and particulars, you might as well be in your bed. 
“ Thou holdest my soul in life, and sufferest not my 
feet to be moved. Thou rescuest me every day 
from dangers, and from sicknesses of body and soul; 
from public shame, and from the strife of tongues. 
Thou continuest to work in me, by Thy special 
grace to me, some timeous remembrance of my 
latter end ; and some true recollection and shame, 
and horror, and grief of heart for my past sins. 


THE SECRET BURDEN 


279 


Glory be to thee, 0 God, for Thine unspeakable, 
and unimaginable goodness to me,—of all sinners 
the most unworthy, the most provoking, and the 
most unthankful! ” You could not say things like 
that in the pulpit, no, nor at your own most in¬ 
timate family altar. And, yet, they must be said. 
There are men among you whose hearts would 
absolutely burst, if they were not let say such 
things : aye, and say them, not once a week, like 
this great saint, but every day and every night. 
And it is to them—few, or many among us, God 
alone knows,—it is to them that this Scripture is 
selected and sent this morning,—this Scripture . 
And I will pour out upon them the spirit of grace and 
of supplications, the spirit of repentance and con¬ 
fession, the spirit of intercession and prayer for all 
men : and the still more blessed spirit of praise 
and thankfulness : and they shall pray and piaise 
apart , till their Father which seeth, and heareth, 
apart and in secret, shall reward them openly. 

Down to Gehenna, and up to the throne, 

He travels the fastest, who travels alone. 


XXIII 


THE ENDLESS QUEST 

“ Lord, teach us to pray.”—L uke xi. i. 

“ He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He 
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him (lit. that seek 
Him out).”— Heb. xi. 6. 

I must not set myself up as a man able to mend, 
and to make improvements upon, the English 
translation of the Greek Testament. At the same 
time, it seems to me to be beyond dispute that the 
English of the text falls far short of the exact point 
and the full expressiveness of the original. Rem 
acu :—touching the text with the point of a needle, 
Bengel exclaims: “A grand compound!” And it 
is a “ grand compound/’ The verb in the text 
is not simply to seek. It is not simply to seek dili¬ 
gently. It is to seek out : it is to seek and search 
out to the very end. A Greek particle, of the 
greatest possible emphasis and expressiveness, is 
prefixed to the simple verb : and those two letters 
are letters of such strength and intensity that they 
make the commonplace word to which they are 
prefixed to shine out with a great grandeur to 
Bengel’s so keen, so scholarly, and so spiritual eyes. 

280 


THE ENDLESS QUEST 


281 


Ever feeling after God, if haply I may find Him, 
in a moment I saw the working out of my own 
salvation in a new light; and, at the same moment, 
I saw written out before me my present sermon, 
as soon as I stumbled on the Apostle’s “ grand 
compound.” “ But without faith it is impossible 
to please Him : for he that cometh to God must 
believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them 
that seek Him out ” to the end; of them that seek 
Him out saying, “ Oh, that I knew where I might 
find Him 1 ” That seek Him out saying, “ Verily, 
Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.” That seek 
Him out with their whole heart. That seek Him 
with originality, with invention, with initiation, 
with enterprise, with boldness, with all possible 
urgency, and with all possible intensity and strenu¬ 
ousness. As also, to the end of a whole life of the 
strictest obedience, and the most absolute and 
unshaken faith, and hope, and love. “ A grand 
compound ! ” 

As we go on in life, as we more and more come 
to be men and leave off speaking as children, and 
understanding as children and thinking as children, 
we come to see with more and more clearness what it 
is to us,—what it must be to us,—to arise and return 
to God, to seek God, to come to God, and to walk 
with God. At one time we had the most un¬ 
worthy and impossible thoughts of God, and of our 
seeking Him, and finding Him. We had the most 


282 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


materialistic, and limited, and local, and external 
ideas about God. But, as we became men, we 
were led,—all too slowly, and all too unwillingly,— 
yet we were led to see that God is an Infinite and 
an Omnipresent Spirit : and that they that would 
seek God must seek Him in the spiritual world , 
that is, in that great spiritual world of things into 
which out own hearts within us are the true, and 
the only, door. “ Thou hast set the world in their 
hearts,” says the Preacher in a very profound 
passage. The spiritual world, that is ; the world 
of God, and of all who are seeking God out till they 
are rewarded of Him. “ We do not come to God 
upon our feet,” says Augustine, " but upon our 
affections.” And thus it is that we, who are so 
materialistically minded and so unspiritually minded 
men, find it so distasteful, and so difficult, and so 
impossible to seek out God till we find Him. 
Were He to be found in any temple made with 
hands; were He to be found in Samaria or in 
Jerusalem, between the Cherubim on earth, or on a 
throne in heaven,—then, we should soon find Him. 
But because He has set the spiritual world, and 
Himself as the God and King of the spiritual world, 
in our own hearts,—we both mistake the only way 
to find Him, and miss our promised reward of Him. 

How can I go away from Him,—and how can I 
come back to Him, Who is everywhere present ? 
“ Whither shall I go from Thy spirit ? or whither 


THE ENDLESS QUEST 


283 


shall I flee from Thy presence ? If I ascend up 
into heaven, Thou art there. If I make my bed 
in hell, behold, Thou art there.” A question, a 
chain of questions like that, put continually, put 
imaginatively, put day and night and in dead 
earnest to a man’s self, will be the beginning of a 
new life to any man among us. Questions, prob¬ 
lems, psalms and prayers, like that,—raised, reasoned 
out, understood, and accepted,—will open our eyes. 
A man has no sooner stated these things to himself 
than, from that moment, he begins to see as never 
before, something of the greatness and the glory 
of God ; something of the Divine and Holy Spiritu¬ 
ality of God ; and, consequently, something of the 
pure spirituality of all his intercourse with God. 
I see then, that it is not God who has turned away 
and removed Himself from me in His omnipresence 
and omniscience : but that I have gone away and 
removed myself far from Him in all my thoughts 
and words and deeds. I have gone away from 
God in my heart. And, as my going away from 
God was, so must my coming back to Him be. 
And thus we are told of the prodigal son that his 
coming to himself was his first step back to his 
father. And his whole return began, and was 
carried out, by recollection, and by repentance, 
and by confidence in his father’s forgiveness, and 
by a resolution, at once acted on, to return to his 
father’s house. The whole parable took place in 


284 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


his own heart. The far country was all in that 
prodigal son's own heart. The mighty famine was 
all in his own heart. The swine and their husks 
were all in his own heart. The best robe and the 
ring and the shoes were all in his own heart. And 
the mirth and the music and the dancing were all 
also in his own heart. “ He hath set the whole 
world,” says the wise man, “ in their heart.” 

Take then, as the first illustration of this law of 
our text, take the truly studious, or, as I shall call 
him, the truly philosophic seeker after truth, if not 
yet to say after God. Let that student be, at 
present, a total stranger to God. Nay, I am bold 
to say, let him be at secret enmity with God. Only, 
let him be an honest, earnest, hard-working, still- 
persevering, and everyway-genuine student of 
nature and of man. Let him never be content 
with what he has as yet attained, but let him love, 
and follow, and seek out, the whole truth to the 
end. Now such a true student as that will not 
work at his studies with one part of his mind only; 
but in the measure of his depth, and strength, and 
wisdom, he will bring all that is within him, as the 
Psalmist says, to his studies. He will bring his 
heart as well as his head : his imagination as well 
as his understanding : his conscience even, and his 
will, as well as his powers of recollection and reason¬ 
ing. And as he works on, all the seriousness, all 
the reverence, all the humility, all the patience and 


THE ENDLESS QUEST 


285 


all the love with which he studies nature, will more 
and more be drawn out as he ponders and asks,— 
who, or what, is the real root, and source, and great 
original of nature and man ? Who made all these 
things ? And for why ? And by this time, that 
true student has come, all unawares to himself, 
under the sure operation of that great Divine law, 
which is enunciated with such certitude in this 
splendid text. For he that cometh seeking God, 
whether in nature or in grace ; whether in God’s 
works, or in God’s Son, or in God’s word : if he 
still comes with teachableness, and with patience, 
and with humility, and with faith, and with hope, 
and with love to the end,—all of which are the 
qualities and the characters of a true student,— 
that man, by this time, is not far from God. Till 
the very vastness, and order, and beauty, and law- 
abidingness, and loyalty, and serviceableness of 
nature, will all more and more pierce his conscience, 
and more and more move, and humble, and break 
his heart. And God will, to a certainty, reward 
that man, that serious, and honest, and humble- 
minded man, by putting this psalm in his mouth, 
till he will join his fellow-worshippers here in singing 
it: “ The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
the firmament sheweth His handywork.” But it 
is the law of the Lord that is perfect, converting 
the soul: it is the testimony of the Lord that is pure, 
enlightening the eyes. “ It is true that a little 


286 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism : 
but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds 
about to religion : for while the mind of man looketh 
upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes 
rest in them, and go no further : but when it be- 
holdeth the chain of them confederate and linked 
together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. 
Then, according to the allegory of the poets, he 
will easily believe that the highest link of nature’s 
chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter’s 
chair.” 

We speak in that large and general way about 
what we call great students and great thinkers 
and great philosophers, as they feel after, and find 
out God ; and we do not speak amiss or out of place. 
But there is no student in all the world like the 
student of his own heart. There is no thinker so 
deep and difficult as he who thinks about himself. 
And out of all the philosophies that have been from 
the beginning, there is none of them all like that of 
a personal, a practical, an experimental religion, 
and an out-and-out obedience to all God’s com¬ 
mandments. That is science. That is philosophy. 
As the Book of Revelation has it: “ Here is wisdom ” : 
and “ Here is the mind which hath wisdom.” The 
mind, that is, which seeks God in all things, and at all 
times, and that seeks Him out till it finds Him. And 
till God says to that man also, “ Fear not, Abram : 
I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.” 


THE ENDLESS QUEST 


287 


Is there any man here then, this day, who is 
saying : “ Oh, that I knew where I might find Him ! 
That I might come even to His seat ” ? What is 
the matter with you, man ? What is it that has so 
banished your soul away from God ? What was 
it that so carried you away into that captivity ? 
And what is the name of the chain that holds you 
so fast there ? Do you ask honestly and in earnest, 
—“ What must I do to be saved from this far 
country, this hell-upon-earth into which I have 
fallen ? ” O man ! You are very easily answered. 
Your case is very easily treated. You are not a great 
thinker : you are simply a great sinner. It is not 
speculation that has led you astray, but disobedi¬ 
ence, and a bad heart. You must not expect to be 
flattered and fondled, and sympathised and con¬ 
doled with, as if there was some deep and awful 
mystery about you. Oh no! there is nothing 
mysterious or awful about you. You are a quite 
commonplace, everyday, vulgar transgressor. There 
are plenty like you. “ Say not in thine heart, 
Who shall ascend into heaven ? . . . Or, Who shall 
descend into the deep ? . . . But what saith it ? 
The word is nigh thee.” That is the word of repent¬ 
ance, and return to God, and a better fife, and a 
broken heart, which we preach to ourselves and 
to you. Do you not understand ? Do you not 
know what it is in you, and about you, that lands 
you in such nakedness and famine and shame and 


288 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


pain and death ? You know quite well. It is sin. 
It is nothing but sin. It is the sins and the faults 
of your heart and your life. Now, this is wisdom. 
This is the mind that hath wisdom. To put your 
finger on yourself and say : It is in this, and in this, 
and in this, that I always go away from God. 
It is in the indulgence of this appetite. It is in 
this wicked temper. It is in this secret envy and 
ill-will. It is in this sour and sullen heart. It is in 
this secret but deep dislike and evil mind at that 
man who so innocently trusts me, and who so 
unsuspiciously thinks me his friend. It is in this 
scandalous neglect of prayer; this shameful, this 
suicidal neglect of all kinds of personal religion 
in the sight of God. Believe the worst about your¬ 
self. Fix on the constantly sinful state of your own 
heart, and on the secret springs of sinful thought 
and feeling within you : seek yourself out , as the 
text says, and you are thus seeking out God. And 
the more evil you seek out of yourself,—and put it 
away,—the nearer and the surer you will come to 
God. Fight every day against no one else but 
yourself; and against nothing else but every 
secret motion of pride, and anger, and malice, and 
love of evil, and dislike of good. Every blow you deal 
to these deadly things of which your heart is full 
is another safe and sure step back to God. At 
every such stroke at yourself, and at your own sin 
God will by all that come back to you ; till, at last. 


THE ENDLESS QUEST 


289 


He will fill your whole soul with Himself. That was 
the way, and it was in no other way, that Enoch 
“ walked with God ” in the verse just before the text. 
And you too will walk with God, and God with you, 
just in the measure in which you put on humility, 
and put off pride; and fill your hot heart full of the 
meekness and lowly-mindedness of the Son of God; 
and, beside it, with the contrition, and the penitence, 
and the watchfulness, and the constant prayerful¬ 
ness of one of His true disciples. To hold your 
peace when you are reproved,—that is a sure step 
toward God. To let a slight, a contempt, an affront, 
an insult, a scoff, a sneer, fall on your head like an 
excellent oil, and on your heart like your true desert 
—“ with that man will I dwell/’ says the God of Israel 
and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
Every step you take out of an angry and wrathful 
heart, and out of a sour, sullen, and morose heart, 
and into a meek and peace-making heart, out of 
envy and uneasiness, and into admiration and 
honour; on the spot your heavenly Father will 
acknowledge and will reward you. Seek Him out : 
and see if He will not ! 

And, then,—remaining always at your true post, 
within yourself,—come out continually in that mind, 
and seek out God in all outward things also. For, be 
sure, He is in all outward things as well: and He 
is in them all for you to seek Him out till you are 
rewarded of Him. In every ordinance of His grace 

19 


290 


LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 


and truth He is to be sought out by you. On every 
new Sabbath, and in every psalm, and prayer, and 
scripture, and silent and secret hour of that Sabbath. 
In every week-day providence also. He is in every 
providence of His for many more beside you : but 
He is there for you, just as much as if He were 
there for no one but you. In public providences, 
in domestic providences, as well as in all those more 
secret and personal providences that have been so 
many perfect miracles in your life. And in every 
change and alteration in your circumstances. 
God, all-wise, does not make a change in your 
circumstances just for the love of change. It is all 
for His love to you, and to make you seek out a fresh 
proof of that love, as well as to draw out some new, 
and warm, and wondering love out of your renewed 
heart to Him. After you have appropriated to 
yourself all the reward He had prepared for you in 
one age and stage of your life, He leads you on to 
another age and another stage : and He hides 
Himself and His grace there for you again to 
seek Him out. And this goes on, all through 
your life, till He teaches you to say, “ One 
thing do I desire, and that will I seek after, and 
that is God, my God, my Life, my Joy, my Blessed¬ 
ness.’* 

Men and women ! What are you living for ? 
What is your life yielding you ? If you are not 
finding God in all parts of your life—what a fatal 


THE ENDLESS QUEST 


291 


mistake you are making ! And what a magnificent 
reward you are for ever missing ! 

But, when all is said, it is not to be wondered at 
that so few of us seek, and seek out , God. For His 
greatness passes all comprehension, and imagina¬ 
tion, and searching out, of men and angels. His 
holiness also makes Him a “ consuming fire ” to 
such sinners as we are. And then, His awful 
spirituality, omnipresence, and inwardness,—we 
would go mad, if we once saw Him as He is, and at 
the same time saw ourselves as we are. “ And He 
said, There shall no man see Me, and live.” We 
must grow like God before we can both see Him and 
live. And thus it is that it is only His very choicest 
and chiefest saints who do seek Him out to the end 
either in His Son, or in the Scriptures, or in their 
own hearts, or in Providence, or in nature, or in 
unceasing prayer. It is only one here, and another 
there, who ever get the length of crying out with 
Job, “ Oh, that I knew where I might find Him.” 
And with Isaiah, “ Verily Thou art a God that 
hidest Thyself.” And with Paul, “ Dwelling in 
light which no man can approach unto : Whom no 
man hath seen, or can see.” 

But, just in the depth and adoration of their 
cry ; and just as their sight and sense is of the 
greatness and the glory of God,—just in that kind, 
and just in that degree, will their reward be, when 
He shall reveal Himself at last, and shall Himself 


292 


l 

LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY 



become their exceeding great and everlasting Reward. 
And though we are not worthy to stoop down and 
unloose the latchet of the shoes of such great, and 
such greatly rewarded, saints of God : yet, if we 
also seek God, and seek Him out to the end of our 
life,—feeble as our faith is, and smoking flax as 
our love is,—yet by His grace, after all our partial 
discoveries of God, and all our occasional experi¬ 
ences of Him, we also in our measure shall receive, 
and shall for ever possess, and enjoy very God 
Almighty Himself for our own Reward for ever. 

“ Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
and the knowledge of God ! . . . For of Him, and 
through Him, and to Him, are all things.” “ Whom 
have I in heaven but Thee ? And there is none 
upon earth that I desire beside Thee.” “ My scul 
longeth, yea, even fainteth : . . . my heart and 
my flesh cry out for the living God. . . . They go 
from strength to strength, every one of them in 
Zion appeareth before God.” 


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